Wes Phillips

For many years one of my most beloved guilty pleasures has been reading George MacDonald Frasier's books. Not just the Flashman Papers, which I have found delightful and from which I have learned a lot of 19^th century history, but also his McAusland novels, his Mr. American,his spirited adventure novel Candlemass Road (which, at a taut 181 pages, is one of the finest examples of economical action writing ever), and his masterful history of the Scottish boarder wars, The Steel Bonnets.

In yesterday's philippic">http://blog.stereophile.com/wesphillips/011307ces/">philippic about CES's petty annoyances, I said that I continue to be a recidivist in spite of them. The reason? Pretty much that the high-end portion of the industry remains a fascinating, personal, and essentially civilized place.

It must be the week after the Consumer Electronics Show: I'm all written out on consumer electronics, my feet hurt, and I have a cold. All three happen every year.

Our least trusting cat has inexplicably determined that her favorite perch in the house is on the heavily trafficked threshold between the kitchen and living room. She's training us to step lightly—and as far to the other side as possible.

On Christmas day, my friend, the Nuyorican goddess Liz Ramirez-Weaver saw me looking at Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. "It's good," she said. "You should borrow it."

Technology Review, which is one of the magazines I not only eagerly await, but read from cover to cover, published a">http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=19845"… 14 page screed against network news by John Hockenberry in the January/February issue.

The Economist has an uncredited article about great">http://www.economist.com/world/europe/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=1027… charts. They're all familiar to readers of Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantative Information, but they are great charts.