search
Things are coming together and we're moving right along. We're gearing up for the Home Entertainment Show and preparing for all the spring and summer fun.
I'm happy to say that the new Stereophile t-shirts have arrived, in both men's and women's styles (we are, indeed, hopeful), and the baseball caps are on the way. Even more exciting, for me at least, are the soon-to-be completed Attention Screen CDs. I've already seen the very attractive digipacks and booklets, and everything looks as it should — all of the pages are in the right order and no pictures are upside down!…
Sitting in Hong Kong harbor one afternoon, I watched container ship after container ship set sail across the Pacific, piled unbelievably high with cargo modules. I asked my host, "How can that be stable?"
"It isn't," he replied, "but manufacturers calculate that shrinkage from being washed off the deck is cheaper than using less densely packed ships."
That can't be right, I thought. Apparently it is. Worldwide, about 10,000 cargo containers fall overboard each year. Oceanographers are using that flotsam to chart surface currants and swirls.
Stephen Ambrose gently suggested that the ingenuity of the American soldier was a contributing factor in the Allied victory in WWII, pointing to the GI-engineered solutions to, say, Normandy's hedgerows as an example. That creative spirit is illustrated linguistically, too, as shown in the linked list of acronyms and expressions.
I love the black humor of BOHICA and BCG. I also followed the link to the meaning of "Hooah!" and was charmed by the Ranger variant of "Who, us?"
Via Grow a Brain.
"The classic beginner's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day."
The OC Register's Timothy Morgan writes about the increasing tendency of classical audiences to applaud between movements. His response? "I don't care."
I too have noticed this—even here in NYC. It puzzled me at first, but it doesn't really bother me—at least not as much as the program rustler two seats away from my stall at the NYP series I've been frequenting, or the fact that people with apparently life-threatening catarrh still insist on attending. A little applause between movements barely gets my goat.
Former Talking Heads frontman and the author of This Is Your Brain On Music discuss Music, language, and memory.
The secret life of the F word. Now that you know what it's about, you know not to click the link if that sort of thing offends you. Me? I live in Brooklyn—we use it because "uh" sounds so inexpressive.