Wes Phillips

Greg Stepanich ponders the 25^th anniversary of Glenn Gould's death, commenting that "1982 was an unpropitious year to die for a man who found such a great creative outlet in technology."

The definition of "fetish" is "object or part of the body that arouses libidinal impulses—often to the exclusion of genital impulses." Fetishizing that annoying Microsoft Word paperclip, however, goes beyond extreme kink into deeply creepy territory.

You've seen the ads from YG Acoustics: "The best loudspeaker on Earth. Period." It sounds arrogant. But come on—high-end audio has never been a field of shrinking violets. When Ivor Tiefenbrun of Linn announced that the turntable, not the cartridge or loudspeakers, dictated the sound quality of an audio system, that was a man convinced that he was right and taking on the world. And was Krell's Dan D'Agostino any less arrogant when, in 1980, he introduced the KSA-100 power amplifier? In a world where small size and high wattage were the norms, didn't it take a pair of big brass 'uns to bring out a honkin' huge slab of metal that put out only 100Wpc?

And a bottle, too. Wayne Curtis considers The History of the New World in 10 Cocktails.