search

Music Has a Future

Richard Dyer's valedictory column for The Boston Globe is surprisingly upbeat.

"The century has seen changes in the distribution of music that no one could have imagined. Before the end of the 19th century, the only way to hear music was to go hear someone else play or sing it, or play or sing it yourself. The cylinder recording, the flat 78 rpm disc, the LP, the CD, the iPod, not to mention the use of music in other electronic media such as radio, television, and the movies, have changed not only the way we listen to music, but what we listen to.

". . . In the context of such…

Mirror, Mirror

In the new study of brain activity, volunteers silently read phrases describing movements involving one of three body parts. All of the phrases activated movement-related regions in the left frontal cortex—presumably the ones responsible for moving the body part in question.

Hmmm, I suppose that the same experiment involving even more suggestive literature—porn, restaurant reviews, audio criticism—can't be far behind.

Popcorn Seasoning

Speaking of keeping it real:
"I just hate starting the day like this," JA sighed.

He'd been stuck in the Madison Avenue traffic. Buses, taxis, and eighteen-wheelers coughed and moaned, sending their fumes into a bright, blue sky. I watched and waited as red turned to green turned to red. On my hand truck, I balanced the tall Silverline speakers, the squat PSBs, and the weighty Zanden amplifier. The air was cool. Our office building is shaded not by green trees, but by gray scaffolding. Construction workers filed in and out, rolling large spools of black cable…

The Biology of B-Movie Monsters

Being big isn't simple. "Absolute size cannot be treated in isolation; size per se affects almost every aspect of an organism's biology. Indeed, the effects of size on biology are sufficiently pervasive and the study of these effects sufficiently rich in biological insight that the field has earned a name of its own: 'scaling.'"

CMS Online!

If you know that CMS means The Chicago Manual of Style, you didn't need that exclamation point. If you don't, a hundred of 'em wouldn't make the news exciting.

Considering that I once bought a teeshirt just because it was an exact match to the orange-colored CMS book jacket, I'm pretty chuffed.

The Science of <i>Stereophile</i>

It was only popcorn. Only?

John came in this morning and asked if I'd retrieve the PrimaLuna ProLogue 3 from our storage room.

"I heard from their engineer," he says. "They came up with an impedance figure that is very different from what I determined in my measurements, so I want to re-check it. I brought my measuring gear, so I can do it here."

"Cool," is all I can say.

As I type, JA is drawing a crowd. Going without the labcoat in favor of faded blue denim, he whistles while he works. Women admire him, men want to be him, audio components…

25 Signs That, Sadly, You've Grown Up

Sad, but oh so true.

The Inner Life of the Cell

"Nuclei, proteins and lipids move with bug-like authority, slithering, gliding and twisting through 3D space. 'All of those things that you see in the animation are going on in every one of your cells in your body all the time,' says XVIVO lead animator John Liebler, who worked with company partners David Bolinsky, XVIVO’s medical director, and Mike Astrachan, the project’s production director, to blend the academic data and narrative from Harvard’s faculty into a fluid visual interpretation."

Liebler continues, "In the animation there’s a motor protein that’s sort of walking along a line…

Interactive Periodic Table

Hours of mindful fun!

A Brilliant Book Review

My definition of a brilliant book review is one that interests you in a subject you wouldn't have devoted five seconds to—interests you enough to spend many hours contemplating it.

By that standard, Sheldon Rothblatt's essay on William Clark's Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University is brilliant indeed. Almost 700 pages of nuanced erudition tempered with deliberate irony "in the classical rhetorical fashion"? Sign me up!