Parrot

Enjoyed your post, TEC. Please keep the conspiracy theories a-comin'. Say, how many people in the Bush administration and intelligence agencies know where Osama is?

Thanks for letting me know what everyone in the world thinks, mdeneen. Unfortunately, some things are more important than to be subject to simple cost-benefit analysis. That is the French way, not wanting to jeopardize $50 billion in pending oil contracts. Hmmm, if Bin Laden is prancing about the world without a care, just waiting to be collared, I wonder why you haven't nabbed him yourself. I wonder why no Democrats have come up with a plan to capture him, beyond criticizing everything the President does. I guarantee you that any Democrat who caught Bin Laden would get elected.

Interesting article in the Washington Post online today. Emboldened by the anti-war protests around the world, Iraq is not cooperating further with the UN inspectors. As the Bush administration has said, the protests are actually making war more likely, because Iraq doesn't think the world has the guts to disarm them. Oh well, at least some Bush-haters got to have a little bit of fun for a day.

playntheblues, Thanks for posting. I agree with parts and disagree with others, but it's handy to have this kind of argument in one compact article.

Erik, I would suggest you get a Sony SACD unit. The Sony SCD CE775 is a 5-disc changer, but nevertheless is a great machine. It is no longer made, but they are for sale on audiogon.com and ebay. I think they started around $400 and then were discounted to around $200 approaching closeout. Or you could get a Sony SACD/DVD player brand new at BestBuy for somewhere around $200. Any SACD will also play CDs. If you read the reviews, you'll find lots of people raving about how good these sound on CD playback. But where they really shine, of course, is with SACD. I don't think you'll find anything better.

The Zero 100 was heavily advertised when I was growing up. Here is a good site on it: http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/garrarde.html

Dean, Iraq *admitted* that it had hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons in the 1990s. This stuff is potent enough that you need just a speck to kill a man, and they admitted to tons of it. What they want us to believe is that they destroyed it all, but kept no records or documentation of the fact. Now, is that believable? Remember, they were doing all sorts of prohibited stuff in the 90s, including attempts at nuclear procurement, when the inspectors were actually in the country. What do you think they did when there was absolutely nobody there keeping an eye on things for four years, when the inspectors were gone? As for links with Al-Qaeda. Well, the one upper-level guy was mentioned by Powell. Not only was he in Iraq for months, but he was actually in Baghdad for weeks. Iraq is a police state. It's not like the US where people move about freely. Saddam had to have known the guy was there, under his nose. Then recently the CIA director said there were another dozen Al-Qaeda guys known to be operating out of Baghdad. But none of this is nearly as bad as the potential in the future. It all comes down to trust. Do you trust Saddam not to arm terrorists? As a matter of fact, there was one guy who wrote a book about evidence linking Iraq to the World Trade Center bombing, not the hijacking but the bombing. Whether there was any validity to it, I don't know.

Good points, whell. Unfortunately, a lot of people are of the mindset that unless enemy ships or planes approach our shores, we have nothing to worry about. But it's not that easy now. Appeasement can never work. Yet you will find growing numbers of people urging the US to offer up Israel, all in the hopes of appeasing those who will always hate us, regardless. Hitler laid out his philosophy for everyone to read. And Bin Laden too has made his ideas public. Bin Laden felt he could act with impunity because he believed, based on Somalia, that the US was cowardly and could not stand a single soldier's death. He also has made it clear that people respect strength, they "bet on the strong horse." Remember, when we liberated Afghanistan, that Bin Laden called on all Muslims everywhere to rise up and kill Americans. Didn't happen, did it? There's not going to be an uprising this time either, because Iraqis will taste freedom for the first time in their lives. Saddam's people are already bragging that they have defeated the US once again because of the anti-war marches. I say "once again" because Saddam has always insisted he won the Gulf War. (By the way, did anyone catch a single Iraqi protesting Saddam? No. That's because any Iraqi knows he'd be killed for doing so, as would his family.)

Taking things to their logical extreme is fine in a philosophy course, but doesn't translate to the real world. A common form of this is, "What if everyone in the world did what you just did?" The simple reply is, "Not everyone in the world *is* going to do what I just did." Bush has not said anything remotely suggesting that he has anything against the Iraqi people. As a matter of fact, he has gone out of his way to make it clear that the only target the US has is Saddam and his evil regime, the ones who control the common people through intimidation, fear, and threat of torture. You don't see Bush nuking Afghanistan and the borders of Pakistan, do you? No, instead individual US soldiers are trying to kill individual terrorists, one by one--an immense task considering the terrorists look exactly like regular civilians. If Bush were like Saddam, he'd have had Gore executed, he'd have the leaders of the Democratic party executed, and he'd have anyone who said anything he didn't like executed. It wouldn't take long under those circumstances for everyone to be afraid. You need make only a relative few examples to get everyone scared. It took just a couple of Iraqi scientists "disappearing" for it to sink in to the remaining scientists what would happen to them if they fell under suspicion.

By the way, the Bush administration has only said a few thousand times that this has nothing to do with Islam. Terrorism is not a religious practice, even when it is practiced in the name of religion. It seems like you've determined the people of Iraq are happy under Saddam. I can only think you haven't read or listened to a single report about their situation.

You are resorting to absurd levels of exaggeration. If you think the people of Afghanistan liked being under the thumb of the Taliban, I guess I'm not going to be able to change your mind.

mdeneen, What a novel interpretation you have on freeing the people of Afghanistan from the oppression of the Taliban and Al Qaeda: "dislodging local religious leaders and practices." It always amuses me--all the protestors in the USA seem oblivious to the fact that the guy they are defending, Saddam, would be the first one to kill them if they were protesting in Iraq. Or perhaps you think there are no demonstrations in Iraq because the people there have such rosy lives, and because Saddam got 100% of the vote in the last election.

Jalen, Only a thousand! That's more than enough for most people. You should decide if you want to take the vintage route or buy new equipment. If you buy vintage, Craig will revitalize it for about half or a third of what others would charge you.

Jack Straw, Britain's representative at the UN, was eloquent and exactly right in his remarks a couple weeks ago. I think his best line was talking about those who urged no action be taken against Hitler and Mussolini: "At each stage good men said wait; the evil is not big enough to challenge: then before their eyes, the evil became too big to challenge."

Kelly, Try not to be so incomprehensible. You are contradicting yourself right and left and it's pretty tough to know for sure when you are trying to be sarcastic.

This different culture stuff is just an excuse not to do anything. The average Iraqi is scared to death that he'll step out of line. Scared to death because thousands *have* been killed for making Saddam upset. There hasn't been anything like this situation since Stalin. A New York Times reporter wrote about witnessing average Iraquis shaking uncontrollably from fear when they were just asked simple questions. Sound like to you that this is simply a case of a different culture? Something too complex for dumb Americans to grasp? No one is going to benefit more from this war than average Iraquis--that is the ones that aren't used as human shields.

Trey, Copyrights can and do expire. Not sure what you have in mind here.

I know I've seen this picture before. I hope it wasn't here!

Guy, Don't downplay your attachment to Klipsch. Pay attention to your gut feelings and forget about anyone who is ignorant enough to make cracks about them. I'd be willing to bet that if you get any other brand of speaker, you'll be second-guessing yourself/kicking yourself forever. Paul

Good story, Pete. Can you believe someone would keep Klipschorns in their boxes for 12 years without setting them up? Man!!!

Well, Guy, considering this is a Klipsch forum, you probably aren't going to get too many people to recommend buying ribbon speakers. It's not that hard to find praise for *anything* or criticism of *anything* on the web. But Klipschorns are certified classics and will still be around when Newform is long forgotten.

Anything you play on a CD player is really 16-bit. HDCD encoded discs played on an HDCD player will give you a pseudo-20-bit quality. But it's not truly 20-bit. Lots of CDs are mastered using 20 bit or 24 bit processes, but they still have to ultimately change them to 16-bit for them to be playable on CD players. I believe you could record 24-bit if you had the right software and hardware in your computer, and play it back that way, on your computer. I have heard that some CDs have HDCD encoding without being marked as such. Like anything else, the end results are more important than the potential results. If you have a badly mastered anything, it'll sound worse than something excellently mastered even on a weaker format.

You're right; that should have won. A powerful story.

Is Ray's story available anywhere? I never did get to read it.

Thanks, Kirk. I enjoyed your story. Couldn't stand the weather indeed! But other than yours and Andy's, both of which were far more deserving to win than the one chosen, there are still a few that I can't access because they weren't submitted in December. Now remember, according to the winner, when your Klipsches get dirty, it's a good idea to burn them in a bonfire.