I won't give away the ending, but The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten set up such an experiment with Joshua Bell at the L'Enfant Plaza metro stop in DC.…
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As I transfer from the R line to the west side IRT, I'm frequently frustrated or surprised by the size of the crowds attending to subway musicians. What I almost never am is impressed by the performances. But that would be different, surely, if, say, an internationally known musician was playing on his Gibson ex Huberman Strad—wouldn't it? A performance like that would be guaranteed to have music lovers swooning with pleasure.
I'll soon be heading off to the Second Annual International Head-Fi Meet in San Jose on April 21 and 22. I went to the NY Meet last year and I had a ball. This year's event is going to be bigger and, I'm betting, better.
What's a Head-Fi meet? I'm glad I asked: Essentially, it's one of the ways headphone enthusiasts respond to the solitary nature of listening to headphones. Many can do-ers have already created an online community through the Head-Fi forums and the annual Meets and the smaller regional meets are chances for them to get together and create a real-world analog to…
Ed Hitchcock writes: "As both a paleontologist and home brewer, I could not help but be attracted by the media coverage of the reproduction of an ancient Sumarian beer. The beer, called Ninkasi after the Sumarian goddess of beer, was produced by the Anchor Brewing Company (San Francisco, California), based on a hymn inscribed on a clay tablet (1). Dr. Solomon Katz of the University of Pennsylvania and Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing worked to decipher the brewing clues contained within the hymn to reproduce the beverage so revered by the ancient Sumarians."
"Police said the busted driver first shoplifted pepperoni and string cheese from the store after he couldn't find Hot Pockets for his pregnant girlfriend, who was waiting in the GMC. Then he stole the stereo and brought it back because 'it was not of high quality.'"
Although I'm normally dealing with stuff that turns electricity into sound, I am fascinated that Zhong Lin Wang seems to have invented a nanotech power source.
Devising tests that distinguish whether ravens solve problems through logic or instinct ain't easy.
I would like to be at home right now, sitting on the orange couch, listening to the hi-fi. Because Bill Callahan has been on my mind, I think I would choose to listen to Smog's A River Ain't Too Much To Love, an album that soothes me, that makes me feel good.
And Bill Callahan has been on my mind because he's got this new album coming out. It's called Woke On A Whaleheart, and isn't that an exciting name? What does it mean to wake on a whaleheart? I wonder. It feels like something special, something magical, something important. I see deep red and brilliant blue, and I…
Back in March, I posted a link to a Physics Web article on iconic equations, which quoted Gauss' assertion that if Euler's formula wasn't immediately obvious, the reader probably has no chance at being a first-class mathematician.
Kind of makes you curious about "the Mozart of mathematics," don't it?
Anybody who has been around NYC for the last 20 years or so will attest to the fact that it has gotten a lot easier to get great burritos. Ever wonder why? Idle Words fills us in on the secret.
Word Spy is "devoted to sleuthing out new words and phrases. These aren't 'stunt words' or 'sniglets,' but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources."
I found it when I googled "liar loan" when reading James Surowiecki's New Yorker article about sub-prime mortgages. Here's the funny thing: the first usage citation was from Surowiecki's article, although there are many other examples given.