In audio, there's brand loyalty and then there's McIntosh loyalty. Part of that, of course, is that the manufacturer's black glass face panels and glowing blue meters have become audio icons that generations of audiophiles have grown up lusting after, but part of it is undoubtedly because McIntosh is so very good at fostering a sense of community.
Recently we received an SOS from fearless leader John Atkinson. <I>Dolby is staging a press event on an evening I have a schedule conflict</I>, he wrote. <I>Could you attend in my stead?</I> As obligations go, attending an industry dinner is not exactly the most onerous task going—alcohol is frequently served (the best way to guarantee the press shows up) and you get to hang out with your fellow A/V journalists, an admittedly mixed blessing. What is not assured is that there will actually be news.
Good news for those of us on deadline.
My first entry in this blog, six weeks ago to the day, was a news flash that Sonny Rollins, the greatest living improviser in jazz, will play at Carnegie Hall on Sept. 18 in a trio with the monumental drummer Roy Haynes and the agile bassist Christian McBride—a one-night stand that no jazz fan could stand missing.
. . . Not Huckleberry.
"my youth i shall never forget
<BR>
but there s nothing i really regret
<BR>
wotthehell wotthehell
<BR>
there s a dance in the old dame yet
<BR>
toujours gai toujours gai"
Why does a hive's queen act so, um, unladylike? It turns out that's an interesting question—and not the only one.
It's always right.
Peeved at Clippy the annoying talking paperclip in MS Word? If you're rude to him, he'll tell you how to turn him off. Programmers call this unhappy user detection.
Taylor Dinerman offers an appreciation of Heinlein on the occasion of his centenary. Of course, he conveniently skips over that embarrassing incest novel <I>Time Enough for Love</I>, but I've always marveled that that one raised eyebrows at all. After all, the heroes of <A HREF="http://ieng9.ucsd.edu/~mfedder/zombies.html">"All You Zombies"</A> (considered by some to be the best time travel story ever—although I confess to being thoroughly creeped out by it) and <A HREF="http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/scifi/byhisbootstraps.pdf">"By His Bootstraps"</A> go considerably further than traveling back in time to seduce their mothers.