"Larry, I've just come from the Alexis Park." Tom Norton, editor of <A HREF="http://www.ultimateavmag.com/"><I>Ultimate AV</I></A>" button-holed me. "I think the Pioneer speaker is worth a visit. It's one of the only new things I've found over there." Tom's words rung in my ears. Had to see it!

Jimi Hendrix on Swedish television in 1967. Need I say more? Computer speakers don't do it justice, turn it <I>up</I>.

Make mine a Venti? Give me a break! I once asked a Starbucks counterperson why they called their humongous-sized hot-milk drinks "ventis." "That's Italian for twenty," the barrista said. <I>Riiiight</I>, like any Italian I've ever met would slam down 20 oz. of coffee at a time.

This is so cool&mdash;the Library of Congress has posted excellent scans of pages from its exhibit of manuscripts from the era when Timbuktu was not synonymous with "as far away from here as you can get." Nine hundred years ago Mali was a flourishing trade center, serving as the entry point for goods from the Mediterranean and exit point for African trade. And, at the height of the Middle Ages, it was a nexis for scholarship and science.

Learning rejuvenates the brain; going without sleep impairs cognitive function. That single sentence repudiates my whole strategy for getting through college&mdash;no wonder I find myself going, "It's just like wassisname said . . ."

Simple? Then <I>explain</I> what happens when liquid converts to gas. <I>Hah!</I> Not all that simple, eh smartypants? No, I can't do it either, but Eldred Chimowitz and Yonathan Shapir have created a mathematical model that might just do the trick.

After a week in a Vegas hotel, it was such a relief to come home to real water pressure in my shower, although I do understand why a city in the desert legislates low-pressure nozzles. I'm not sure I am unreservedly in favor of hacking showers, however. I stayed in a hotel in Sicuani, Peru once where the hot water function was a bare 220V wire wrapped around the water pipe. <I>That</I> woke me up&mdash;as did the cold shower I took after making sure the wire was disconnected. I think I may have even turned off the bathroom light just to be on the safe side.

A line of speakers that impressed me when I auditioned them at the 2004 London Show was the Vivids, from South Africa. Designed by Laurence "Dick" Dickie, the engineer primarily responsible for B&W's groundbreaking original Nautilus design back in the mid-1990s, the Vivid speakers use proprietary metal-diaphragm drivers in enclosures formed from composite materials rather than wood. Seen here in one of the Audiophile Systems rooms, with VTL amplification and dCS's new P8i SACD player (review forthcoming), the Vivid B1s produced a clean, open sound. It was announced at CES that Vivid is being distributed in the US by <A HREF="http://www.musicalsurroundings.com/">Musical Surroundings</A>.