Because you get websites like <I>Paul's Boutique Samples and References List</I>, which, of course, attempts to codify every sample, quote, and homage from the Beastie Boys album <I>Paul's Boutique</I>. Probably more than you ever wanted to know, but (IMO) that's what makes it so cool: It was done out of love, pure and simple.
Science meets art and I'm transfixed. These are gorgeous photos.
Published in <I>The Atlantic</I> in 2000. What a great piece of writing. Long, but I'd have hung in even longer for anything this masterful.
This is just wrong on so many levels.
I'm not a member of the games generation—well, I kind of miss <I>Zork!</I> and <I>Adventure</I>, but other than <I>Myst</I>, most of them require hand/eye coordination that I simply lack—which is not to say that I'm immune to the levels of complexity and artistry that many games exhibit, simply that I don't get 'em, most of the time.
Have you tried to buy graph paper recently? Those 16-year-old clerks at Staples have no clue what you're talking about. If you really want to see their eyes glaze over, tell'em when you went to school you had to carry your own hand-powered computer called a slide rule.
Readers often complain that high-end audio products are priced too high for the typical enthusiast to afford. But good audiophile gear does exist. In your opinion, what's the best audio deal out there?
Life used to be simple. A preamp was a phono stage, a line stage, and the controls necessary to manage a system. Sure, there were exceptions, but for the most part you could say "preamp" and everyone knew what you meant. With the rise of the Compact Disc, however, phono stages became standalone components or optional extras, and most manufacturers concentrated on the line stage and controls, pursuing the ideal of "a straight wire with gain."
There was once an Englishman named H.A. Hartley, who was a contemporary of H.G. Baerwald, P.G. Voigt, P.K. Turner, and other men whose first two names are lost to us. Hartley was a capable designer and audio theorist, not to mention a gifted lecturer and writer—his literary achievements include a book on astrology (footnote 1), of all things—and he's often credited with coining the expression <I>high fidelity</I>. Most important of all, in 1928 H.A. Hartley teamed up with the aforementioned P.K. Turner to create an audio manufacturing company known as Hartley Products, Ltd. The Hartley company made electronics and loudspeakers, the latter of which included full-range coaxial drivers using energized field coils and, later on, quite powerful permanent magnets—just like their countrymen at Lowther Loudspeakers, Ltd.