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Cold, Steely Efficiency

Elizabeth and I went out to Quiznos for lunch today. They make those toasted sandwiches, you know.

We learned that it takes more people to make a sandwich than it does to make a magazine — one person to slice the bread and squeeze out the salty dressing; one person to add the floppy meats and cheeses, and stick it through an oven [That guy deserves a raise!]; one person to collect it from the oven and add the browning lettuce; one person to wrap all that goodness up; and one person to stick it in a bag and take your money.

I wonder what kind of budget an operation like that…

Friends Because of Chemistry

I accomplished a ton today, but not nearly all that I wanted. That's alright, though; I'll get more done tomorrow.

But, this was another one of those days when it was absolutely impossible for me to overlook my good fortune. I received constant reminders of the fact that I work with totally awesome people — people who are not only brilliant, but kind and beautiful.

Check this out. Today alone:

John Marks invited me over to his place for the weekend to listen to a $100,000 system before he crates it back up. "Best sound I've had here yet," he tells me. Unfortunately…

Free Music

I love Cantaloupe Records. David Lang's The Passing Measures is one of the most beautiful compositions I've heard this millennium and Phil Kline's Zippo Songs was my hit of CES2006. While supplies last, you can order a free Bang On A Can/Cantaloupe Records sampler and find out for yourself how good their recordings are. Adventurous and different—and did I mention free?

More 21st Century Neologisms

Favorites:

Blowing your buffer: Losing one's chain of thought
GOOD job: "get out of debt" job
World Wide Wait: What did you think www. stood for?

I've Suspected This For Years

Does HT surround-sound only need to be "good enough?" According to a new NIH-sponsored study, "the circuits in the brain that process auditory information are influenced powerfully by the circuits that control where the animal is looking—the animal's direction of gaze." Umm, the animal being, for the purposes of this study, a barn owl.

Studies on ordinary couch potatoes are in the works, I'm sure.

Mark Twain <I>vs</I> Tom Sawyer

I love Twain and view UC/Berkeley's Mark Twain Project to print everything. ever written by Sam Clemens (even down to the individual drafts) as God's own work. Yet, like many readers (including Ernest Hemingway), I've always had a problem with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn's final chapters—say, around the time Tom Sawyer highjacks the novel.

The moral center of the novel, of course, is Huck's decision that sacrificing his friend Jim's freedom to ensure his own eternal salvation isn't a choice he can make. "All right then, I'll GO to hell" may be one of the most powerful lines in all of…

Accordion Guy's Disappointed in Margot Timmins

Joey deVilla, aka Accordion Guy in the 21st Century, is disgruntled (trust me, Accordion Guy is at his best when he's not gruntled). His beef? The fundraising dinner held last night for Canadian MP Sam Bulte, aka Hollywood's MP, because of the perhaps coincidental linkage between her advocacy of extremely restrictive copyright legislation and her acceptance of financial support (57% of her campaign war chest) from institutions such as the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, Canadian Publishers Council, and the Entertainment Software Alliance.

Of course, AG, isn't simply…