gehringer_2

mp3's are compressed, and no question at all quality can suffer greatly there depending on how much compression is requested. The MP3s played by many radio station for instance, are total trash (those on streaming sevices vary). But a CD, which is the correct comparison to an LP, is not MP3s, it's made of .wav files, which is not a compressed format. In a wav file the input audio stream is digitized 44,100 times per second and 65536 (16 bits) possible volume levels on each channel. There is no loss detectable by human hearing (which tops out at about 15,000 Hz), and just as importantly, no recording device with more than 16 bits of dynamic range for making a recording. There is something missing in digital recordings, it's that little bit of white noise from the master tapes (from old stuff) and the 'grey' noise from the vinyl surface. That can 'soften' the sound of recordings make in too live an environment and make it sound 'better'. But it is not a more 'faithful' reproduction - you're mostly exposing poor production choices. It's sort of the same effect as the need to soften the focus on high res cameras when shooting close-ups in film. It can be disconcerting to see a face in that kind of detail across a 30 ft screen. But don't blame the camera.

In sort of a strange sort of political symmetry, COVID is going to end up killing pretty close to the same number of people in the US that immigrate here in one year. Not drawing any meaning here, just an observation of scales.

It appears that in COVID, Bejing has found the perfect vehicle to strangle Hong Kong..... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/27/covid-hong-kong-quarantine-omicron/

LOL - I guess if people like to hear the sound of a stylus scrapping vinyl as the perfect background to their music because they were conditioned to it for decades, that's their business, but please stop with the silly attempts to justify the sound as a better reproduction. OTOH, I will grant that the loss of LP cover art and good liner notes has been tragic.

nothing can possibly be more insane than the re-emergence of vinyl.

From what I've read in the past, Gorsuch sometimes parts from the conservatives because he will work from property rights perspective. The idea of unjustified government 'takings' figures may in his thinking --like in McGirt v Oklahoma, which puts on a more anti-gov footing than the rest of the conservative block - or least Thomas, for whom no government action ever seems to needs limitation. As pure philosophy - it's very, very....very old school

says the guy who complains that his city is too dangerous to be out and about in.

With an interim University Prez now at the Fleming Bldg, a lot of things could end up stuck where they are for a while. Which may be OK since the Athletic Dept was not exactly Coleman's forte in her first go round.

there are 10 counties in MI at under 50%. And I wouldn't say 'organized' is even the important question. If India has vaccinated 50% of 1.5 billion people they have still accomplished a heck of a lot more in absolute terms than we have. And I would put it that I don't have as much as dim view of American as a simply frank one, the dim view view is more a matter of impatience with those who can only see her through myth and rose colored glasses.

He's just setting down the markers for his authoritarian inheritors.

I have no independent data but I don't see any great push back about India's claims. Why can't people who are poor be socially organized? India has a huge pharma industry and a well developed public health infrastructure. Certainly fair to question a Modi government but I wouldn't be at all surprised if India has achieved a higher vax rate than the US.

LOL - sadly spot on.

true. I admit finding it hard to take VP choices as a serious consideration (well, at least other than ones that are all 'mavericky' - )

though not mutually exclusive, in the case of Obama vs Bernie they were not running in the same elections.

Hard to accept that India may be better organized and socially coherent that the US isn't it? It's probably not your father's India anymore, and it certainly isn't our fathers' US! The bigger weakness in the Indian achievement is likely not the numbers claim but that they have used a lot of what is probably not very effective vaccine stock - having relied initially on Russian and other less well performing products. It looks like one big stick they used was that they made vaccination mandatory to get on a train.

We have airbrushed away King's economic radicalism to make him more palatable as a cultural icon. With both US parties having capitulated to big money interests (including Obama) I would say it's hard to guess where he would come down today - but for sure Bernie Sanders is probably as good a guess as any.

the authoritarian side has always been happy to suppress speech as a political act, but the idea of suppressing speech as a therapeutic act seems to me (at least) to be a marker of 21st century progressivism. The repudiation of the more classic Americanism of "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" comes to us from sectors that are on what I would call the authoritarian left. Now in this case we can probably safely say the suppression at heart is still for political reasons and the therapeutic claim is simply cynical cover. But maybe in the broader sense that is the case on both sides. I suppose that it's probably true that even on the part of the progressive segments that have given us this therapeutic speech limitation paradigm that at a deeper level it's just a re-emergence of same kind of leftest thought control authoritarianism expressed in Leninism or Maoism. And it goes back to the other related question I don't really have an answer for, which is the separate but almost converse problem of demonstrably false speech having powerful economic platforms exactly because it is comforting/therapeutic to those listening.

The left has itself to blame for promulgating the idea that speech in and of itself can be oppressive. Maybe they are even correct on some levels - it's not a trivial topic, but either way the right would not have thought it themselves.

Would tend to argue he has been unhappy with the offers he had received. Water under the bridge at this point but still, wouldn't it be funny if the Tigers' actaully had been the best offer he got before the lockout?

you also had a FO that couldn't/wouldn't build an O-line; strangely committed to a mediocre LT and an undersized Center.

Asshattery on 1st Street. All I can hope is that this kind of juvenile conservative performance modeling helps drive Roberts further from the conservative camp.

Harbaugh dances to a tune only he can hear. I don't know whether he is staying or going but I can probably guarantee none of the talking heads out there have any real idea either. I tend to think he stays. I think to Harbaugh, MI feels like his place in the world. Now if something drastic happened - like a situation where the regents or admin put MI in some kind of untenable competitive situation where he just didn't want to coach anymore - sure I could see him leaving, but I don't think the possibility of that, while real, is more than tiny.

Just a shame there aren’t more Buffalos in the league

quite possible. Or they are just not in any hurry. Interestingly enough, straightening out the Athletic dept has been a major success under Schlissel, notwithstanding that he seemed to have little or no interest in it.

the problem with prior 'infection' is that the term doesn't bring any quantitative value with it. The clinicians have more confidence about vaccination because they know exactly what the patient got and what the statistics for the response to it are. If someone had bothered to do the same for positive cases we might might now a lot more about what kind of clinical presentation is associated with what kind of subsequent immune response, but that information seems to be lacking. Right now I'm not sure anyone can say much for certain about what having had a a positive test means in terms of your immunity. There are are lots of assumptions that can be made, probably a lot of them may be pretty pretty good ones, but is there much data? I think that is why there is hesitancy in accepting 'positive test' as signifying as much as a vaccination.