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Scientists say your brain does it for you. Now, I'd like them to reverse the experiment to see if that's why okay home theater can be "good enough," but so-so hi-fi seldom is.
My wife gave me a copy of The Complete Persepolis for my birthday and I've been devouring it greedily. Satrapi's graphic novel uses a charmingly primitive visual style to tell a horrifying story of growing up in revolutionary Iran.
So, if I've been greedily devouring it, why haven't I completed it yet? Because it so powerfully portrays events—such as sending the ill-trained children's army to be slaughtered in WWI-style human wave assaults by promising them paradise—that I frequently have to put it aside and just think for a while.
I'm used to that response with print (cf Chet…
Jonah Lehrer has been promoting his new book Proust Was a Neuroscientist, which means I've heard him interviewed on the usual chattering-classes suspects. And every time I hear him, I think I need to read his book.
See if you don't find this article interesting.
Busy here in Stereophile HQ. As the salsa blares ("Clavo saca clavo!"), we're happy to be working on Issue Number 1 of Volume 31. That's January 2008. And I just sent the 2007 Article Index to our copy editor, Richard Lehnert. Having compiled this list of every equipment report, column, interview, and feature we've published over the past year, I can confidently say:
We kick ass.
Also on the agenda is the creation of our 2007 "Product of the Year" plaques. This is a fun project. I make a(nother) list and take it across the street to Crown Trophy, where the woman behind…
The race to discover the Higgs boson. What's that you say? "It is what determines if a particle can glide along effortlessly like a photon or if it must trudge like a hefty proton."
You can understand then why we 're going to have to look hard.
Ex-professional football players expect to live with pain, the byproduct of a job well done, says Paul Solotaroff. What they don't expect is the shabby treatment afforded them by the game for which they squandered their good health. And with union representation like Gene Upshaw, who needs hostile team owners to do 'em dirty?
"'Every reputable expert says that blows to the head'll cause damage if they happen enough,' [Brent] Boyd says. 'But the NFL happens to have the only neurologists who say that the jury's still out.'"
Read it and weep.
Andrew Davidhazy, professor of Imaging and Photographic Technology at RIT, has spent a lifetime taking extremely high-speed photos of interesting phenomena like water dripping and stuff blowing up real good. Here's a gallery of his work.
Richard Taruskin on the media assault on the declining value of classical music, as seen through the writings of Kramer, Johnson, and Finegold—and wouldn't that make a fine name for a law firm?.
Contains twice the daily serving of spleen.
J Mascis' soaring solo comes to a sudden end. Elizabeth walks into my office, tentatively.
"Did I hear you playing something other than salsa?" she asks.
I nod my head sheepishly.
"Yeah," I admit, "I freaked out John, too."
***
Today is Elizabeth's birthday, by the way. Happy Birthday to E. I think she turned 23.