• This week (or was it last week? I haven’t done this in a while) Slate answers that pressing question, “Can You Survive In Space Without A Spacesuit?” The answer is a resounding “No!” Actually, the author appears to say “Yes, for a short time,” but that is only if you consider fifteen seconds to be “a short time.” Pretty much the very moment you enter into space, your lungs begin to rupture, sending deadly air bubbles to your heart and brain. Needless to say, the next time you step out into space, make sure you’ve got a spacesuit on, jackass! That’s what they’re made for! Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to go out in the rain without wearing some kind of jacket with a hood?
• Hey collector scum, you’re not alone with your record vaults and your over-sized Ikea bookshelves filled with 12″s and 10″s and old 78s. According to this article in Gramophone, Adolf Hitler was also a record collector, and his collection was potentially found in the attic of a former Soviet intelligence officer. He was sure to possess early pressings of Bronislaw Huberman’s 1929 Berlin set of Tchiakovsky’s Violin Concerto (was that released on Prestige, or Blue Note? HA HA! I made an old jazz LP joke no one is going to understand!)
• Record producers are complaining about the sound of MP3s. They’re saying that computer files represent less than 10 percent of the music that you would hear on a CD. Meanwhile, artists are promoting themselves on the Internet, thanks to some website called MySpace, and the RIAA can’t pay its court-ordered settlements. It sure seems like a weird time to be in the music business.
• Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who is also known as President Bush’s “war czar” told NPR that if our army suddenly finds itself short on grunts, we can always re-institute the draft. In other news, doesn’t this story appear on some website every several months? Everybody panic?
• Some organization put together by the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame has come out with a list of the 200 definitive albums you need to have in your collection. Notably absent from the list: pretty much anything that’s good. They really crapped out with a “lazy” list here, putting Sgt. Pepper’s as number one and Dark Side of The Moon as number two. Piper At the Gates of Dawn was not on the list, and Pearl Jam was number 11. Can you believe there have only been ten albums better than Pearl Jam that were ever made in the history of recorded music? I can.
No, I can’t.
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