LATEST ADDITIONS

Nope, not politics—physics.

It's the compound that makes wine smell peppery. One scientist said, "If you can measure something, you can understand its behaviour and how to control it." Hmmm, that sounds oddly familiar.

Cory Doctorow has a new column in <I>The Guardian Unlimited</I>, which in itself is great news. Even better, he hits one out of the park first time out, with a comparison of DRM and ideologically comforting junk science.

Junior (John L. Doughty, Jr.) is a Mississippi Delta cultural anthropologist who documents juke joint culture. That means he gets to hang out in jukes and talk to people (and photograph it all). What a great job.

<B>Nirvana: <I>Nevermind</I></B><BR>
Geffen/Sub Pop DGCD-24425 (CD only). Butch Vig, Nirvana, prods. AAD. TT: 59:22

I already thought <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel">aerogel</A&gt; was amazing, but now it appears that it can clean heavy metals and organic pollutants. I knew I should have bought stock.

Zbigniew Herbert’s <I>Collected Poems, 1956-1998</I> is good news for those of us who have long admired his poetry. Or so I thought, until I read David Orr's <I>NYT</I> article about the Alissa Valles translations used in the new book.

Born in poverty on the outskirts of Barquisimeto in the Venezuelan interior, Gustavo Dudamel has become what Simon Rattle calls "the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across."

The Grolier Club has mounted an exhibition that takes miniature books bigtime.

Glassy highs, "muddy bass" . . . Are there any hi-fi qualifying words that you find especially appropriate? Inappropriate? Why?