Norway's Hegel Music Systems has made its way to the US market. I met Hegel and the company's charming founder, Bent Holter, at the <a href=" http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2007/010907set/">2007 Consumer Electronics Show</a> and then again in Las Vegas during <a href=" http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/011208top/">the following year</a>. On both occasions, I had a lot of fun listening to music and learning about Holter's designs. As I wrote last year, I was instantly attracted to the designer's combination of tech-talk and passion for music. The guy is at once serious and totally wacky.

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We're always asking the big questions: Are we really alive? Will we ever find true happiness? How can we be better human beings? What's love, but a secondhand emotion? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken? How can the high end audio industry reach a wider audience?

On the train this morning, a pretty girl sitting directly in front of me, with a large purse in her lap, and connected to it, an iPod. Earbuds to her pretty, little ears letting loose the music, the most appalling of all songs ever to hit the Top 40: The Beach Boys' "Kokomo."