Hard-Wired For Sound?
Are the brains of animals hard-wired to detect the footfalls (or wingflaps) of predators? Dr. Cord Westhoff thinks so.
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Jake Shimabukuro
<I><B>Walking Down Rainhill</B></I><BR>
Hitchhike Records
Didn't Alfred Bester Invent This?
Yahoo reports on the "tongue port," which sort of combines elements on the space-commando neural switching technology from <I>The Stars My Destination</I> with Chip Delany's direct neural jacks from <I>Babel 17</I> and other early work. Cool—and kind of scary.
Price Gouging and Retail Sales
One of the most common complaints we see when writing about consumer dissatisfaction with CDs is "price gouging" by greedy corporations. Several <I>Stereophile</I> readers have written that they"know" CDs only cost pennies to make, so $16.98 is a rip-off for a product that should sell for under $10.
William P. Gottlieb, R.I.P.
I just learned that William Gottlieb died last night. Like every jazz fan, many of my images of the jazz greats come directly from his photography. Billie Holiday with her head back, eyes closed; Django Reinhardt, cigarette a-dangle, fretting a run; a skinny Frank Sinatra looking beyond the microphone . . .all are indelible Gottlieb images. You'll probably see lots of obituaries in the next few days, but a visit to the Gottlieb collection at the Library of Congress might be the best place to remember him.
Spirals
John Marks writes: "Peter Sykes, who played the Goldbergs live at HE Whatever in NYC, clued me in to the site www.larips.com.<P">Which is “spiral” backwards—and which argues for a solution to Bach’s temperament problem. Sykes finds it convincing.
Put On Your Red Shoes and Dance the Blues, or: Blend With the M
There's a knock-knock at my door.
137-Year-Old Submarine Discovered
Actually, people knew it was there, they just didn't realize what it was. Be sure to check out the photo gallery.
Pooh on the Couch
Turns out that the 100 Acre Wood was a place "of disenchantment, where neurodevelopmental and psychosocial problems go unrecognized and untreated."
Maybe There Is Accounting For Taste
Scientists studying the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) think they've discovered the neurons responsible for making choices. Soon, they may tackle the <I>really</I> important issues, such as whether some audiophiles are genetically disposed towards choosing solid-state over tubes.