Wes Phillips

Bagheera looking uncharacteristically silly—although maybe she's just blinded by my new flash.

On December 31, 2006, the UK will pay off its post-WWII debt to the US. "Nobody pays off their student loan early, unless they are a nutter," Dr. Tim Leung explained. Well, the full story is a bit more complicated than that. Or maybe not.

I have a soft spot for this show, but what really impresses me about this article on the long-running series is that the Sci-Fi network stuck with the show and worked to get viewers versed in its backstory and mythos, instead of just moving it to different time-slots each week like the "real" networks do.

Headline of the year.

The Independent interviews Jared Diamond, author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The good news? We may not be doomed. The bad news: Yet, that is.

I'm going to be on the road for the rest of the week, so blogging will be even more irregular than usual. I'll be visiting NHT's facility in Benecia, CA—so check the Stereophile Galleries for some instant gratification—and I will be putting up new links, just not as early.

My friend Jeff gave me a copy of the new CD remaster of this David Byrne/Brian Eno disc—and it's great. Now Byrne and Eno, "in keeping with the original spirit of the album," offer listeners access to the original multitrack recordings and a chance to remix them through a Creative Commons license. They also offer a chance for the remixes to be posted in a daily Top 20, as chosen by the site moderators.