LATEST ADDITIONS

I was ruminating on the Dave Barry "On Hallowed Ground" essay, wondering if there was another example of great war or crisis writing I could link to, when I thought about A. J. Liebling's WWII work for <I>The New Yorker</I>.

On my way to work this morning, I noticed that the cool air felt like the first days of school. Though I often hated those first days of school, I enjoyed the feeling of this morning's cool air.

Yes, it's the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and the media coverage is relentless. However, despite all the hoopla, the solemnity of the day can still sneak up on you&mdash;it happened to Jeff Wong and me this morning as we completed out daily bike ride and came upon a memorial service for firemen and policemen from our neighborhood who died that day.

Peter Zylberberg of Audio Excellence in Yorkville, Toronto sends along the following warning:

Even though the calendar year starts January 1 (or, if you're in the electronics industry, with the January CES), many of us still think of Labor Day as the beginning of the year. That's when school always started&mdash;or, again if you're in the electronics industry, the week after is when CEDIA's (Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association) Expo takes place. As the show has grown over the years, it has also become the kick-off to the important (and, hopefully, lucrative) end-of-the-year sales season, with many companies debuting significant products they hope will make <I>their</I> Q4 profitable.

In a surprising move, the San Francisco Symphony has announced plans to release the next installment in its ongoing Mahler series, the beloved Symphony 5, in download format before issuing the recording on hybrid SACD/CD. The Fifth will first become available on iTunes on September 12, and in hard format three weeks later. Such an unprecedented release schedule, from one of the few symphony orchestras in the world to regularly record in the high-resolution SACD format, can be seen as part of a near-universal recognition among record labels of the importance of online sales.

Naxos, possibly the world's largest classical music label, has taken a leap into the virtual universe of digital downloading. In an unprecedented collaboration&mdash;including Naxos of America, the country's largest independent distributor of classical music; eMusic, the world's second-largest digital music service; and bricks-and-mortar retailers such as Borders&mdash;Naxos has introduced MPkey, an exclusive series of downloadable classical music collections. Available for purchase only at bricks-and-mortar retailers (and exclusively at Borders stores through December 1), MPkey enables consumers to painlessly download pre-selected Naxos collections of classical music.