Wes Phillips

Audiophiles are lucky when it comes to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, especially when you consider the embarrassment of riches that are the Shostakovich String Quartets. If you dig LPs, there are two essential batches of complete recordings: the Borodin Quartet and the Fitzwilliam Quartet. On CD, there's the fabulous live edition by the Emerson">http://www.stereophile.com//musicrecordings/671/">Emerson Quartet, rendered in superb sound by Da-Hong Seetoo.

These animated Nissin Cup-O-Noodle ads are great! Almost makes me want to buy some just to say thanks.

You simply have to read "The Peekaboo paradox," a fantastic piece of writing by Gene Weingarten. (It's long, so you might prefer to print it out and save it for later.) It conforms to a formula I admiringly call The New Yorker paradigm, in which a writer introduces you to a subject you think you don't have much interest in (in this case a children's party entertainer) and makes it fascinating. Then you discover that the real story is so much deeper and compelling than you could have ever imagined.

Rules? We don't need no rules! Oh, you mean these are our secret laws? Nevermind.

Over at NewScientist, there's an article on an alternate gravity theory called scalar-tensor-vector gravity (STVG), which seems to have an edge on Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). Which one meshes best with the data? Why the one that contains quantum, of course! Well, kinda sorta.

Great, readable essay by William Gibson on the season that changed his life. He has some fascinating thoughts on H.G. Wells that have made me want to dip back into that writer's work.

Set your irony scanner to high and read about the kerfluffle involving the MPAA making copies of a film submitted for a rating. Even better, if the film maker sues, the MPAA's defense will probably hinge on whether or not it intended to sell it. Does that mean if they argue successfully that intent to profit is the definition of piracy that we can make copies too if we promise not to sell them?