LATEST ADDITIONS

Add <I>Jazz and Conversation</I> to your list of favorite sites. Intelligent musings and great musical examples&mdash;what's not to love? It's free and you get to discover new music you might not have heard anywhere else.

I emailed my cousin, the gorgeous and talented Jean Carwile Masteller, about the wonders of reading <A HREF="http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:jDVL8c_Arv0J:etext.virginia.edu/toc… Mather</A> on the internets and she countered with the fabulous Whitman Hypertext Archive. Both are courtesy of the University of Virginia's digital library project, where my old friend Thorny Staples is helping Mr. Jefferson's university do wonders in the electronic age.

Don't try this at home.

At CES2006, we were pleasantly surprised to encounter Jim Shannon in Quartet Marketing Group's exhibit room at the Alexis Villas. "What are <I>you</I> doing these days?" we asked. He gestured around the room. "I'm a partner in Quartet," he said. "I've been here since July."

A University of Michigan research team under Kensall D. Wise has developed a ribbon-like cochlear implant that substantially increases the amount of auditory stimuli over the current models. Approximately 100,000 patients have had cochlear implants to ameliorate profound deafness; however, Wise described these implants as limited in frequency sensitivity, as well as bulky and difficult for surgeons to insert.

Audiophiles sure don't have it easy. We put in a hard day sweating to hear those diminishing-return differences, and when we're finally ready to pontificate, no one at the party will obligingly ask us what we think. They've made that mistake before, you see, then spent the next 45 minutes frantically looking around the room for someone to rescue them.

"BRIDGE WILL BE RAISED AT 1:45 PM," said the road sign. I looked at my watch. 1:35. I sighed and let my right foot become even more leaden.