The biggest problem with many consumer products these days is that the people who make 'em never figured out what they needed to be. That's why I have an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machine I have never figured out how to send a fax with. I could read the manual I suppose, if I ever figure out which pile of papers it's under.
John Atkinson just sent out a very strange e-mail:
Apparently there was some sort of awards ceremony in LA last night, but news of it has only just reached Brooklyn. I stopped caring about the Oscars years ago (pretty much around the time I became a voting member of NARAS and realized how little the Grammies had to do with musical quality), but I never cease to be amazed by how much they seem to matter to other non-film-industry people. Mark Evanier has a nice essay about the post-ceremony media frenzy—and he totally pwns Tom Shales.
I do so love <I>The Smoking Gun</I>.
In zero-G, doesn't everybody?
My friend Jeff Wong sends this "Beatles Anomalies List," suggesting that it's the audio analog to other obsessions for geeks who need a life—people like me, in other words.
On re-writing unhappy endings.
On the eve of the release of a new DVD edition of <I>Empire of the Sun</I>, J.G. Ballard muses on how strange it can be when Hollywood options your life—or something like it.
While SACD and DVD-A seem pretty much format roadkill, do you have any hopes that the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats will use their high-resolution audio capability?
No, you aren't reading an old newsdesk article that has inadvertently been published a second (or third) time. On March 2, congressional representative Mike Ferguson (R-NJ) introduced House Resolution 4861, "the audio broadcast licensing act of 2006." Ferguson's co-sponsors were Edolphus Towns (D-NY), Mary Bono (R-CA), Bart Gordon (D-TN), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).