Over at <I>The Times</I>, Terence Kealey begs to differ, not just with Barenboim's (and Plato's) premise that music uses sound to educate the soul in virtue, but also that "making music and playing it in an orchestra is the best way to understand democracy."

Next, we have this article, submitted by Jonathan Scull, which says the lectures rail against "passive noise pollution"&mdash;that Daniel Barenboim claims we are too frequently forced to hear music over which we have no control and, thus, we listen too infrequently to music we have actually chosen.

Today's posts follow a common theme. First, we direct you to the Reith lectures on BBC4. And yes, dear readers (this means you, Clay White), this time you get transcripts as well as audio streaming and podcasts.

Yes! Find out that it's a lot harder than you think to make a vinyl record. Best part: Incorrectly centering the disc. (Most record presses do a pretty good job of this.)

So I don't mind if you think I'm a hopeless dweeb for loving last night's <I>West Wing</I>. After all, when I asked my flight attendant for a special service on Saturday, I said, "you'll probably lose all respect for me . . . ."

If you read <I>Stereophile</I>'s audio news regularly, you'll frequently see items such as <I>XYZ Audio Acquired by Megalomart, Inc.</I> Have you ever wondered about what that really means? I haven't, and I <I>write</I> those stories. Heck, now that I think about it, over the last eight years, <I>Stereophile</I> has even <I>lived</I> one of those stories.

<I>Jamo's jammin':</I> At the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), <I>Stereophile</I> was entranced by the look of <A HREF="http://www.jamo.com/">Jamo</A>'s striking reference R 909 "open baffle" loudspeaker ($14,999/pair). The dipolar high-gloss R 909 (available in black, red, or yellow) dispenses with the conventional box enclosure, mounting two 15" (380mm) woofers, a proprietary 5.5" (150mm) hard-conical cone (HCC) midrange, and a 1" (25mm) ScanSpeak Revelator tweeter into its raked-back front baffle, which is reinforced by a "flying" rib that lends it rigidity.