June 2006 – LonelyMachines

Minidisc: perhaps not dead, after all

Not many folks noticed Sony’s announcement earlier this year that they’d be phasing out the Minidisc format. In fact, most people were unaware that it was even still alive in the 21st century.

As it turns out, Sony was still churning out models in the new Hi-Md format, and they continue to do so.

In the era of high-capacity mp3 players, Minidisc seems something of a throwback. Originally designed as a replacement for CDs, the format was soundly rejected by a public already feeling burned by the forced obsolesence of vinyl. It gained a second life (and a fervent cult following) as a recording medium, and as a replacement for analog tape.

The discs were rugged and the units made pristine digital recordings with no audible artifacts. The format quietly improved to the point that the ATRAC3 recordings were virtually indistinguishable from CDs in terms of sound quality. Pre-recorded discs met with apathy in the American market, but in Japan they were plentiful and could even be purchased at convenience stores.

Continued...

Civil Rights

It’s not about marriage.

Well, apparently I overslept today, and while I was out of it, Congress managed to turn our country into a utopia. They must have:

eradicated crime,
addressed the disparity between rich and poor in health care,
secured our borders,
rendered us safe from terrorism or any other external harm,
solved the drug problem,
procured a source of free, renewable energy and
fixed our ailing school system.

I mean, otherwise why would they be wasting our time and tax dollars proposing the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads,

Marriage in the United States of America shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.
Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

(H.J. Res. 106 (108th Congress 2004) and S.J.

Continued...

Visual Media

X3: The Last Stand

I grew up on Chris Claremont’s X-Men. The book struck a chord with me, and soap-opery as it was, it was much better than the silly fare most companies were churning out. Claremont took some of the strangest people imaginable, breathed life into them, and made the reader care.

Somehow that all lost focus in the late 80s when Jim Lee hijacked the book. Throughout the 90s, it was a total mess, with a revolving door of mediocre writers and artists who really had no feel for the characters. Every now and then, I’d pick up a copy out of nostalgia, but the books were filled with ridiculously muscled (or ridiculously endowed, in the case of the female characters) ubermensch who seemed to be distinguished from each other by their names only.

Sales dropped, and Marvel started a “let’s throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks” approach.

Continued...