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Oliver Sacks on music and amnesia—and about just how puzzling cognition and memory truly are.
"If Alex were a dog, he would be 189 years old. But he's a parrot and he's 27. In parrot years that's 27. Unless Alex chokes on a nut or falls out of his cage, he should live another 50 years. In a perfect world, healthy parrots can live 80 to 90 years."
We know it didn't turn out that way. Seed reprints its 2004 article on Alex, the grey African parrot.
Just to get you in the mood, if you're going to hear Sonny Rollins at Carnegie Hall tonight. Or, if like me, you won't be there, just as a treat, there are some new videos up on Rollins' website.
Hat tip to Adam Sohmer.
Stephen has challenged me to build a system with just $1000.
I need to think fast. My requirements for the system are loudspeakers, preamp/power amp, phono stage, turntable, CD player... Shit. $1000! That's it? I'll use the 2008 Buyer's Guide data and see what I can do...
***
System A
Pro-ject Debut III: $299. Check out that blue finish!
Vincent PHO-111: $150
Sony PlayStation SCPH-1001: $40 (average price as observed from eBay). The PlayStation isn't just for playing Tony Hawk, although you could.
Cambridge 340A: $329
Paradigm Atom v.5: $…
Is there a link? I dunno, I happen to like the "modern fashion ... for the tall, thin and very un-breast-like champagne flutes."
I suspect that sentences like "Men have long dreamed of sipping fine wine from their lovers’ busts cast in glittering crystal" are far more revealing of the author's proclivities than they are universal truths.
RealTraps's Ethan Winer has condensed what must have been thousands of hours of work into one six minute video.