Vinyl

I did some more playing around with Groove Mechanic. It did a good job of removing the pops and clicks on Steve Miller's Space Cowboy but was not as succesfull on my dirty (from the factory) opening of Wagner's Das Rheingold.

I searched the web for cleaning techniques and the old soap and water helped some. I might try rewashing them again. There are some commercial cleaning solutions and brushes but I will try the low cost route for now.

Music Industry

I've been out of music stores for too long. I went shopping for a niece and had sticker shock. $18.99 for a CD? Come on! And the music industry wonders why everyone is ripping CDs? I know it doesn't cost a lot to make a CD. I have a lot of musician friends that produce their own CDs. A CD, in a run of 500, costs about $2 a CD for professionally done package. Unit costs come down with a bigger run.

It doesn't seem that long ago that CDs were $14.99. So what do we get for the extra $4? Screwed?

Labels Singing the Blues Over Expensive Failures
Music: Lackluster sales add to problems at firms already battling Web piracy, soaring expenses and eroding profits.

Pop diva Mariah Carey was the biggest free agent in the music business when she signed a four- album, $80-million deal last spring with British music giant EMI Group. Carey's albums had sold more than 100 million copies, and EMI figured she would add luster to its music lineup and trigger plenty of cash flow along the way.

But the September release "Glitter," Carey's first album under the EMI deal, has been a dud. Only about 2 million copies have been sold worldwide, leaving the company with an estimated $10-million loss on the album, including marketing costs. The conglomerate now is in talks to pay a settlement to Carey and bail out of the rest of the contract, sources said.
[read more]

Hello! Does anyone notice that the music sucks?

The War Against Some Terrorists

Policies of Power
Dialogues with James Fallows
An exchange with Walter Russell Mead, the author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World

Asleep at the switch
Journalism’s failure to track Osama bin Laden

thanks to BuzzFlash

The Silence on Terrorism

Everyone professes to love free speech -- the president of the University of Texas calls it the "bedrock of American liberty," the American Council for Trustees and Alumni supports it, the mayor of Modesto defends it, the president of the University of Florida -- they are all committed to free speech.

Just not on their dime, not on their campus, not in their backyard. Not when it disrupts or upsets. Everone is all for free speech, but a closer look at a number of recent cases suggests that when right-wing pundits stir up controversy -- which, it's important to mention, they have every right to do - - people in power, from city councils to boards of trustees, are responding by silencing the troublemakers. And a troublemaker, these days, is anyone who dares to criticize any aspect of the war on terrorism as waged by the Bush administration.
[read more]

War's Forgotten Faces
Larry Thompson of Refugees International describes what life is like for the refugees of conflicts, old and new, in Afghanistan

Israel/Palestine

The Enemy Within
Israel’s gravest danger is not the Palestinians

Israel’s gravest danger today is not the Palestinian Authority, or even Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but the one it faces from within. During the past year, peace activists have been “invited” to meetings with the secret service, where they are “warned” about their activities. The secret service routinely intercepts the e-mails of peace groups, and often obstructs solidarity meetings or protests in the West Bank by declaring whole regions “closed military zones.” For months, the Gaza Strip has been totally closed off to Israelis from the peace camp—including members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset—and only Jewish settlers, journalists and soldiers can now enter the region. The security forces’ ongoing attempts to frighten activists have surely affected the left, but their attack on civil liberties is only one manifestation of much broader social processes taking place within Israel.
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Stop American Billions for Israeli Bombs

There weren't any surprises in the foreign-aid bill Congress passed last week, least of all in the appropriation the U.S. handed Israel: more than 17 percent of the entire foreign-aid expenditure, $2.7 billion. That's on top of the $2.5 billion in military support from the defense budget, forgiven loans, and special grants the tiny state rakes in each year. Up to 80 percent of this aid never leaves the U.S., because it's earmarked for arms purchases that must be made here.

As usual, there wasn't any significant debate, and to be sure, nobody seriously suggested America's largesse be linked to Israel's compliance with human rights accords, UN resolutions, or international law. The prevailing view—as the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC puts it—is that "U.S. aid to Israel enhances American national security interests by strengthening our only democratic ally in an unstable and vital region of the world."

Nonetheless, in the 15 months since the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada, scores of groups around the country have come out against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem —some pressing for a two-state solution, others emphasizing the Palestinian right of return. Now the question of U.S. aid is at the cutting edge of this activism. Campaigns from Berkeley to Boston are connecting demands for peace and justice in the region to Congress's underwriting of the occupation and Israel's use of F-16s, Apache helicopters, and other American-made weapons against Palestinian neighborhoods and refugee camps.
[read more]