Wes Phillips

Here's a sobering story about computer buying. [H] Consumer went to Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, and Fry's Electronics to buy a computer and simply tells us what happened. The money quote: "Most retail sales people are simply not going to possess the necessary knowledge to correctly recommend or explain every nuance of a piece of hardware. Even if a sales rep has all that down, a greater skill is required from them: relating that 64-bit-Lightscribe-GeForce knowledge in a non-condescending, helpful way to someone who is unsure what his hardware needs even are. The potent combo of techie know-how and properly relating it to an 'everyday' consumer is a difficult knack to develop. Most sales reps you’ll encounter are polishing one or the other, if not both of those skills, if they posses them to begin with."

Mark">http://blog.hometheatermag.com/markfleischmann/">Mark Fleischmann sends us a cautionary link that argues that our immersion in the technological soup of bleeps, blips, and scattershot images is changing us from critters who think in words to ones that utilize pictures.

Are the brains of animals hard-wired to detect the footfalls (or wingflaps) of predators? Dr. Cord Westhoff thinks so.

One of the most common complaints we see when writing about consumer dissatisfaction with CDs is "price gouging" by greedy corporations. Several Stereophile 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.

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.

Actually, people knew it was there, they just didn't realize what it was. Be sure to check out the photo gallery.

Turns out that the 100 Acre Wood was a place "of disenchantment, where neurodevelopmental and psychosocial problems go unrecognized and untreated."