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65.8.37.137
from the old Audio Critic web-site
THIS IS GOODBYE!Having reached the 90th year of my life, after several years of very little productivity, I have decided to stop altogether. My website has been discontinued; there will be no more content added to it. That does not mean that what has been published and available up to now will be lost. Everything on the website has been transferred to Welcome to biline.ca News and Updates!, the technology site of Jeff Mathurin. Nothing is missing, thanks to the supportive efforts of Jeff. You can still go to every former section of The Audio Critic by using the menu on the left. It is not without considerable regret that I am making this move, but the time inevitably comes when you have to call it quits. Goodbye, friends and antagonists; it has been a great 38 years!
-Peter Aczel
Editor & Publisher
Midsummer, 2015Link to archive:
http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic.htm
Edits: 07/03/15Follow Ups:
Earlier this week, a customer from the capital forwarded this page link and reference re: Peter Aczel, retiring from audio at the tender age of 90. Ahhh, we should all be so lucky to grace that number. None of us get off this rock alive!As a former speaker manufacturer, known to the existing editor within this forum, as well as many of the so-called high-end journalists on a first hand basis, I have my own experiences of those heady times, when peeps listened; while nowadays, they mostly watch.
I might ask innocently enough: to what purpose does it serve to so savagely waste a human being based on something that may or may not have happened? Where's the kindness and magnanimity that America was once known for? I could recount story after metaphor after allegory, on any high-end editor to how I was treated both personally and as a foreign manufacturer by the stateside mags.
I've been retired from audio these past 15 years, rarely taking part in any online forum discussions, except when a British dude decided to take all the credit for an egg based design, when I *knew* it began in Japan in the '60's.
What really matters is that listening is in tatters...for the most part. There are still no speaker standards for what engineers use in the studio, vis a vis what listeners use at home for playback. As far as equipment goes, a larger perceived difference could be wrought, by leaning over on ones elbow, rather than any wire/cable or amp change.
It's oft been quoted that one may tell the aud in the crowd as he's the first person to start talking after the music starts playin'. Simple is as simple does.
Seriously, :-)) American CD companies fought like hell from the CD inception in 1983 to prevent any SPARS code standard as a rule, so we might be informed. As consumers, we had no rights to know if a disc was analogue or digital in its methodology. And you wonder why the chem. companies are fighting to prevent us from knowing if our food is contaminated with GMO's? I digress. Mea culpa.
Later this winter if time permits and Spirit is present, this scribbler plans on penning a chapter on the history of Waveform for his blog.
jayoh
Edits: 08/20/15
...this news is disturbing to me!
I read a single issue a long time ago and I don't think I've ever laughed so hard and so long at anything. I naturally assumed that he wasn't serious, and I always referred to the mag as "The Audio Comic". The guy was a hoot!
Ok, the whole Fourier thing wasn't the least bit funny... but the Hip Boots column made me roll! I read every issue I could find, especially when I was feeling down. His humor will be greatly missed.
Dishonest people always seem to enjoy projecting their dishonesty onto others.
the more I'm glad I never read him, paid any attention to him or contributed one penny to his existence.
You have to wonder how the hell someone that sounds so despicable lives to be 90.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
...I susbscribed with Issue #1 and was impressed with the 20 or so preamps he reviewed.
That was quite a feat - even if no one but Aczel preferred the Rappaport to the Mark Levinson.
Then with his review of his own Fourier loudspeaker he went off the rails (did he use subscribers' money to make them?). Remember he began his audio career as an ad copy writer.
Then he ceased publishing for a number of years (maybe 7) until his speaker company went bankrupt.
After that he resumed publishing with a vengeance ranting against the industry and promoting naysayers and DBTs with pseudoscience to whoever would pay attention to him.
He was regarded as the reviewer audiophiles loved to hate.
I preferred to ignore him - he was like Grandpa Simpson howling at the moon.
.
...a certain member of the Supremes.
You know the one who stands on the far right.
was always that of a ninety year old. :)
Little did I know when I sent my subscription money I'd be investing in a speaker company.
he invented crowd-funding. :-)
More like "Clown Funding".
...John Dillinger.
.
> Then with his review of his own Fourier loudspeaker he went off the rails
> (did he use subscribers' money to make them?).IIRC, he always said not, that the money he took from subscribers just before
he ceased publishing was used for other things, that he used different money
to bankroll Fourier. But if you look at the bills in your wallet, you can
see that they are actually all identical.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Edits: 07/07/15 07/08/15
Pretty much sums it up .......... LOL
The old Audio Critic issues available for download don't include the one with Aczel's rave review of the Fourier speaker, in which he neglected to tell the readers who paid for his unbiased judgement that he owned the company the made what he called both the best speaker value for the dollar and the best speaker at any price. It was by far the worst ethical violation in the history of audio magazines. As far as I'm concerned Aczel doesn't belong in the company of decent people.
(nt)
Not defending Peter's position , non disclosure puts him on the fence with editorials like TAS, aside , sterophile ( independent review)did indeed find his speaker a worthy contender .
I enjoyed TAS , technical debates , proper testing procedures ,very little fluff , it was pure entertainment .
Regards
... from those few "reviews" that I had displeasure of reading.
But maybe he just smelled funny.
He many not be the the idea of an ad free, subscriber subsidized review publication is, and has been.
Audiophiles talk a big game about wanting ad free, unbiased review mags, but when it comes time to pulling out their credit cards you can hear a pin drop.
Yep, everyone has an opinion until there is something that makes the opinion holder accountable somehow...
If people charged 5 cents for every opinion someone wanted to express, there would be very few comments, and virtually no trolling.
============================
As audiophiles, we take what's obsolete, make it beautiful, and keep it forever.
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
> He [may] not be the the idea of an ad free, subscriber subsidized review
> publication is, and has been.Actually The Audio Critic did publish advertising, just not that much.
I always felt it hypocritical for Peter Aczel to repeatedly accuse other
editors and writers of dishonesty when he himself took money for
subscriptions for what was declared to be a quarterly publication but then
only published sporadically - just 29 issues in 28 years. That, to me, is
dishonest.
And yes, I am well aware of Stereophile's increasingly sporadic publishing
schedule from 1972 through 1981, something I have been documenting as I
post Gordon Holt's "As We See it" essays from that period to our website.
(See link below, for example.) But Gordon didn't make a career of calling
other editors dishonest and was not a hypocrite like Aczel.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Edits: 07/04/15
@John,I wouldn't compare the two John , not producing the required subscribed published amount to editorial content and integrity , is not the same thing. TAC was not flawless nor impeachable , is their anyone printing today who is ....?
Regards
Edits: 07/04/15 07/04/15
> not producing the required subscribed published amount to its editorial
> content and integrity , is not the same thing.
I disagree. When readers send us their money, we are entering into a
contract to send them in return a specified number of issues within a
given period. For a publisher continually to break that contract is
fundamentally dishonest. For that same publisher then to continually
accuse others of dishonesty is hypocrisy.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
@John,I do get your point and see fully your position on this and would agree somewhat about the continuos dishonesty by PA , contrary , would you apply the same to JGH ? Can we say he was dishonest , just not as hypocritical as PA about it ....?
For the record I had no such issues with JGH when he couldn't deliver , same as PA , at the time viewed it more about small pub incompetence than dishonesty and found it par for the course, mostly Interested in editorial content , Then as now ..
Regards
Edits: 07/04/15
> would you apply the same to JGH? Can we say he was dishonest, just not
> as hypocritical as PA about it...?I condemn Peter Aczel as a hypocrite because he excuses his own dishonesty
while repeatedly and publicly accusing other editors and publishers of
being dishonest. Gordon Holt didn't do so.Yes, Gordon also failed to deliver the promised number of issues in a timely
manner in the 1970s, which is letting down readers. But Gordon got trapped
in a spiral of failure. Lack of timely publication, due primarily I
understand to cash-flow issues, led to fewer readers renewing their
subscriptions, which in turn made the cash-flow problem worse.Gordon tried to restart Stereophile by moving from the Philadelphia
suburbs to Santa Fe, NM in 1978, but the move proved catastrophic and it
wasn't until he sold the magazine to Larry Archibald at the end of 1981
(see link below) that Stereophile returned to timely publication.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Edits: 07/05/15
Thanks for the link John , interesting read ,
Change of gears and slight derailment :) couldn't get over Williams botched strategy and poor pitstops this morning , cost Massa Big . Sad , after all these decades, William's F1 still can't get themselves competitive with the pitstops and strategies ....
Your Twin , Steve Machet still botches the commentary ... :)
Regards
And yes, the fortuitous pit-stop to inters somewhat offsets the Monaco cock-up.
13DoW
I'll take that as a compliment - I very enjoyed Steve's 1991 book (linked
below).
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
I have met both , John plays a better guitar ........ :)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ-P7lJ4QMc
Matchett:
We should have Steve do Axpona ... :)
Edits: 07/09/15
> couldn't get over Williams botched strategy and poor pitstops this
> morning, cost Massa Big...
Massa's slow pit stop cost him a place on the podium but nothing could have
got him ahead of Lewis after that perfectly timed stop for intermediate tires!
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Edits: 07/05/15
First, apoloogies for my mangled post..I meant to say:
He is proof that an ad free publication was, and is, untenable. Thankfully you got the gist.
FWIW, I don't anyone can blame anyone who has run Stereophile for the past few decades can be connected to sporadic publishing or anything else JGH may have been responsible for.
Where as, the TAC was all PA, all the time.
He will be an interesting footnote.
HP and TAS should be a footnote , how Ironic for Aczel ....
This is a HP free bashing zone. Even attempt to shine a light on the reality..and "poof" your post is gone.
> > Even attempt to shine a light on the reality..and "poof" your post is gone.
Bullshit. That only happens when you get slanderous or go ad hominen. But then, you already knew that.
Fax mentis incendium gloria cultum, et cetera, et cetera...
Memo bis punitor delicatum! It's all there, black and white,
clear as crystal! Blah, blah, and so on and so forth ...
No bashing , suggesting , TAS and TAC were isodiametrically opposed , one subjective fluff the other objective fluff , pure entertainment in the middle ...
Regards
Edits: 07/04/15
Anyway, the idea that publishing without ads is some guarantor of lack of bias betrays a laughably inadequate understanding of human nature.
Let's assume that a rich uncle I never knew the existence of leaves a huge amount of money in trust for me that I can have access to only if I publish an audio magazine that does not accept ads.
Does that mean that my audio publication is free of bias?
What a stupid idea.
This is humanity, people. I have my likes and dislikes, my loves and hates, my heroes and villains. I think some people in audio are admirable human beings totally apart from their products, and I think a few people in audio are blowhard buffoons, and I think a very small number are scamsters.
I seek out products that deliver exceptional value for money, and I ignore the products of The Merchants of Bling. Are those not "biases"?
So, yes, nearly every audiophile who has a twitchy fixation on the corrupting influence of ad contracts is a pious hypocrite, but, even worse, they have failed to think the premise through.
The only way to get a totally unbiased evaluation is that there would have to be a "separation of Church and State" (a phrase that appears nowhere in the Constitution) between the reviewing staff and the logistical staff, and the reviewer would be escorted into the listening room wearing a blindfold, not knowing the identity or the price of the device under test.
And what would that prove?
Not much.
IMHO.
Happy 4th, y'all y'all.
JM
But the intent was a separation
The Adams quote didn't ring true when I read it and with good reason. He never wrote it. He did write, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
History has vindicated him on that score.
Another John Adams quote:
The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.
But on this and other topics, Thomas Jefferson was generally the more gifted writer, despite this wonderful passage. Political foes in their earlier years, they reconciled and maintained a correspondence for many years into their old age.
"Political foes in their earlier years, they reconciled and maintained a correspondence for many years into their old age."
And died on the same July 4th. Ironic, no?
The Framers were certainly wary of "factions" and sects, both political and religious, because of their ability to fracture what was a nascent and fragile republic. Looking at the balkanized America of today one might conclude they were prescient.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when asked upon leaving Independence Hall, what sort of a government he and his colleagues had fashioned, Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said: "A republic, if you can keep it."
Concerning John Adams: When one looks at the totality of his views regarding religion, or more specifically Christianity, there can be little doubt where he stood.
Snippet: The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.1
Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company: I mean hell.2
The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.3
Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. . . . What a Eutopia - what a Paradise would this region be!4
I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.5
And then there's Thomas Jefferson:
The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.63
The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.64
I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.65
I am a real Christian - that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.66
Geez, Mr. Wall of Separation would be labeled a "right-wing fundamentalist" by today's mainstream media. :)
Thanks for the correction as to who wrote the piece.
Fortunately Jefferson was smart enough to realize that throughout history Christianity had issues. It's not God - it's "many" of the people using their God and holy texts badly that has been and is the problem.
These are some nice ones from Jefferson:
Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82
I know it will give great offense to the clergy, but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to Levi Lincoln, 1802. ME 10:305
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [that a bookseller is prosecuted for selling books advocatig what was then presumed by the statusuo to be pseudoscience] can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.
If M de Becourt's book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose....
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to N G Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller (1814), after being prosecuted for selling de Becourt's book, Sur la Création du Monde, un Systême d'Organisation Primitive, which Jefferson himself had purchased (check Positive Atheism's Historical library for a copy of the entire letter).
[I especially like this one because today you actually have people running around saying that Christianity is under attack or they use the term "militant Atheism" - Militant? Like they go into a Christian home and arrest them for being religious? Jefferson noted above that yes you should be questioning things and reasoning them - but in SOME religions if you merely ask the question you get punished or disowned by your church friends and family. When you live in a time where you can't actually question stuff (you're with us or against us) mentality - all is lost. My issue is that at least Jefferson questioned many today don;t and if you debate them on it they take it as a personal attack or personal insult that "how dare you question my faith" - well it would not be questioned if your faith didn't have an impact on other people's lives. When it does then your faith is going to come under intense scrutiny and deservedly so] RGA
"[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779), quoted from Merrill D Peterson, ed, Thomas Jefferson: Writings (1984), p. 347"
[Seven US states bar non religious or Atheists from running for public office - it's okay to believe in an invisible creature in the sky with zero evidence of the existence of said creature but if you say "I want to see some evidence before I believe in the flying ghost" - nope you can;t run because in order to run you must believe in things that have no evidence - you must prove you have faith. Religious people are atheist about all other religions (over 2000 of them) but their own religion - the ONLY difference is that an Atheist goes one religion more] RGA http://americanhumanist.org/HNN/details/2012-05-unelectable-atheists-us-states-that-prohibit-godless
I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1799 (see Positive Atheism's Historical section)
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803
The one that matters in this thread
The 'Wall of Separation,' Again:
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to the Virginia Baptists (1808) ME 16:320. This is his second kown use of the term "wall of separation," here quoting his own use in the Danbury Baptist letter. This wording of the original was several times upheld by the Supreme Court as an accurate description of the Establishment Clause: Reynolds (98 US at 164, 1879); Everson (330 US at 59, 1947); McCollum (333 US at 232, 1948)
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences.... If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787. (capitalization of the word god is retained per original)
Of course it should be noted that all of these people lived in what would be, compared to today, the stoneage - without science and evidence and proof - all of these intelligent people simply lacked surrounding evidence - had they had it it would be more than likely they would have shut out the stone age texts - they would not be stupid enough to believe the earth is 5000 years old or that people rode around on dinosaurs or believes the minority of science and pseudoscience cranks that promote denying facts for profitable gains - like all the "scientists" (in the minority) who say smoking is healthy and there is no climate change. Jefferson knew how to reason but even with reason without contravening evidence you go with what you know.
And here is the problem I see in the United States - Church and State should be separated because in most cases you see a vote right down political and religious lines in the supreme court - in MOST of those it goes 5-4 entirely on person's upbringing and religious beliefs (or lack of them). It's supposed to be a body free of that stuff. But nope.
Thanks for the exchange, RGA. It's good to see you again. If we learned nothing else from the 20th century we should have learned that we have more to fear from government than religion. After all, Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot were responsible for nearly 100 million deaths. And that's not counting the two world wars or the Vietnam war.
My point is that America was heavily influenced by religion at the time of its founding and its leaders were not immune from that influence.
Perhaps Kevin Williamson said it best last week when he wrote:
"The American proposition is a theological proposition: "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Just how radical that idea is is difficult for the 21st-century Western mind to comprehend. For the entirety of the human experience, most men had been subjects--the ruled living their lives at the sufferance of rulers. The American proposition inverts that: We are citizens, not subjects, and government exists at our sufferance, not the other way around. Americans first applied to politics the Christian belief that we are made in the likeness of Almighty God Himself, not in the likeness of livestock to be herded, milked, and slaughtered
"Americans' religiosity compared with that of our European cousins perplexes and vexes those who do not understand that our civil religion is rooted in our religion-religion, that we have, for instance, a constitutional prohibition on the establishment of a national church because our founders were in the main sundry fractious irreconcilable believers rather than jaded agnostics. We have freedom of religion because our forefathers were Puritan fanatics, not in spite of the fact. Consider the mind of Thomas Paine: Even our anti-ecclesiasticals are evangelical. Paine's character dominates that of the modern American atheist, who burns with a holy fervor unknown to the milquetoast Sunday-morning Christian. Ultimately, we Americans are not a blood; we are a creed."
The reason I love America is that at the very least you live in a nation that is and can freely debate differences of opinions. It seems less so today however that people can debate an opinion without hating the person on the other side of the debate.
I think there is a very big difference between a person's religion or a lack of religion and the way religion is used by those in power. Greed is arguably a religion - not to a God but to money and power and people of faith or non faith can be just as "greedy" as not.
With politics and religion being separated - it is pretty much impossible because you grow up with a set of beliefs largely instilled in you by parents. If you grew up with Muslim parents you will be Muslin - if you grew up with Catholic or Jewish or Christian parents you will be Catholic, Jewish, or Christian. From the time you're small you are being formed by the world you grow up in. And if you rise to power those belief systems will carry into your beliefs on legislation for the masses.
What we have is a blame game and count the massacre game - so and so was X religion and killed X people - this other guy with no religion killed X number of people. Good and evil is difficult to pin down. A non religious person may kill people and religious people may kill people. The difference "can" be that otherwise good people will kill because of their religion. They believe that they are doing a righteous thing because of something that they read...some reward they will get in the afterlife through killing - the 9/11 bombers killing because they were going to serve their God and be rewarded - if that belief was not instilled in their head from birth - perhaps it is possible and even highly likely that they would not have committed the attack - if instead they had no belief in an afterlife and that their one and only life would be snuffed out and they would not get 72 virgins - they might decide that it's worth living and enjoying the time they got. Or if they merely had a different less violent outlook via a different faith.
The idea that I get from Jefferson was that he believed in trying to look at the situation from the outside looking in - to try and see issues not just from his own personal belief system but to look at it as an objective observer - and he had the humility to know that he could in fact be wrong in his belief and to look at a given topic with the notion "what if I'm wrong" about my position and then say to himself if I am wrong then this law or this idea should be looked at entirely differently. Perhaps a heightened sense of empathy.
I am not religious and I was once asked "what if I am wrong and there is a God" - and I suppose this is a good question because "if I am wrong" then I personally might be sent to hell. This not to believe will have dire consequences for me. But it should be pointed out that it will only affect me. Besides - if I believe ONLY to avoid punishment - I'm pretty sure that God would know that and I might be perceived even worse for just covering my butt. And since there is no way for me to "truly believe" it's game over for me.
But I asked the person asking me the question his own question "what if you are wrong and there isn't a God?" - Jefferson and people like him actually consider the question and believe wrestling with that is the way to go - but in many religions if you so much as entertain the "possibility" that there is no God or the holy trinity that even just considering that question even for a millisecond you are automatically barred from heaven.
But certainly looking at that question "what if I'm wrong and there ism't a God" affects entire populations, countries, world policies, environments.
If someone looked outside the box and said "hmm if there is no God"
1) well maybe we be more inclined to do something about the planet because there is no big man in the sky who will swoop in and save our air for us.
2) we would be less inclined to put upon other people our belief systems wholly derived from religion texts and or interpretations from those religious texts. (Gay marriage, abortion etc).
3) We would be more scientifically literate as a planet because we would not be told to ignore results we don't happen to like because it doesn't fit with what stoneage texts tell us. Earth being 5000 years old which is just not factually correct but at least 1/3 of the US population believes. This has ramifications for public policy as well as investment in science in this field and beyond. (See Stem Cell research and others that could be saving lives but is irrationally curtailed because of a holy text and ONLY because of such beliefs)
4) Devaluing lesser species because they don't have a soul ans therefore are only valued as meat or pets.
Really the list could go on endlessly - and doesn't even include the myriad other religions who treat women as lower creatures than cattle and indeed, in western nations they weren't allowed to vote and Africans were used as slaves. And the First Nation aboriginals were slaughtered because they had "backward" beliefs etc.
cheers,
We'll see in death what happens. I'll try and put the sunblock on when I die though -- just in case. And I have to remember to pee before I die. I always like this Rowan Atkinson routine (Mr. Bean)
Dick,Whats your thoughts on Aczel / TAC, review process, you know, Audio and be careful how you brighten up the planet, the plebs might require product testing and actual knowledge about the topic at hand, instead of the usual topical feel good , fluff reviewing.
Regards
Edits: 07/07/15
See Mkuller above.
Although I have grown to have much less issue with blind level matched auditioning than some especially when I see comapanies buying competing machines and putting it inside their own box and charging ten to twenty times the price. Using science to combat an industry open to snake-oil isn't a terrible idea - but the DBT alone as it is used in the audio industry is poor enough that it generates all the negative debates. And it doesn't help when people like Aczel seem to come to it from a dubious aura.
Dick,
The industry is open to snake oil because the plebs have gone for subjective topical fluff reviewing and reviewers , they are then told specs and science don't matter , 50K worth of cables are a must and all is good when the reviewer tingles ...
The oil is the necessary industry lubricant .....
Regards
Not sure what you mean by "Christians". The founding fathers were well aware that they had just achieved independence from a country that actively persecuted Roman Catholics ("Papists") and other Christians who did not belong to the Church of England, led by the king.
Of course, the "Reformation" Adams refers to is England's split from the Catholic church in 1534, in which Henry VIII installed himself as leader of the church in place of the pope.
The founding fathers opposed religious institutions and leaders playing any role in secular government, not necessarily religious principles. That's why the idea is called "separation of church and state", not "separation of religion and state". But Adams also had his own ideas of what those religious principles should be.
"Not sure what you mean by "Christians".
Really?
In point of fact, the American social fabric was saturated with Christianity at its inception and the Framers were not immune. This saturation was so lasting and complete that fifty years later Alexis de Tocqueville would write, "The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other....The greatest part of British America was peopled by men who brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic and republican religion. This con-tributed powerfully to the establishment of a republic and a democracy in public affairs; and from the beginning, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved."
Adams wanted all amplifiers tested via the Power cube method, only Aczel @TAC complied. Toobs of course did poorly on such a test and he was their harshest Critic, favoring instead MOSFETS AS CHAMPIONED by Nelson Pass and others.
Revisionist history regmac , no disinformation is too low for those loaded with a pen pushing their agenda ...
Stand for nothing , fall for everything ...
Edits: 07/06/15
accepting ads is guaranteeing of bias (human nature)
not accepting ads is not guaranteeing of bias (human nature)
i'll take the second: the odds are better of bias-free content
roger wang
And the Asylum is full of bias
is it full of ads?
roger wang
I recall decades ago Bud Fried(then of IMF and before Fried speakers) wrote an article(can't remember where) called Reviewing the Reviewers, the subject of which was a review was as much a tale of the reviewer as it was the object being reviewed. That's, of course, why it's good to read everything you can from a given reviewer, so you can learn to see what his words really mean.
I would rather have a star rating or number rating at the end of the review. Then you can see how it stacks up. But not the magazine doing it - each individual reviewer and all reviewers should have a page list of gear that includes the Zero Stars or F components.
No point of having a star rating out of 5 if everything in the world gets 4 or 5.
Then you don;t have to figure out what they are saying because you can see the overall rating. The problem is those ratings tend to paint themselves in a corner, which is why you have guys like Martin Colloms awarding products a 235 out of 10. LOL.
I you have to read everything from the reviewer to get what on earth he is talking about, that reviewer is an utter failure.
Your well articulated and entertaining post pretty much nails it. Accurate and to the point.
Of course the idea of complete isolation of "Church and State" is virtually impossible to implement, but a good start is not having the Editor married to an ad manager. :)
The only thing you can do is to do what Stereophile has done, to their credit. A magazine has to see itself as a cable provider, with each of its reviewers a different channel.
So if you are Fox News, Mikey is MSNBC, and Art is CNN, and Herb R. is the Cartoon Channel, readers get to choose what channel on the dial they view, and the only thing the reader can do is look at the collective bias of all the writers to form their own opinions.
The biggest issue with the above, unfortunately, is the fat that the demographic of stereophile writers are 100% middle aged white male. Stephen Mejias, before he left to memorize Audioquest marketing literature, was the one exception by age.
I found John Atkinson's claim of not finding suitable writers out of this demographic disingenuous. The email to Sue Kraft was proof positive.
Any Who..time for some grass fed Hot Doggies...
But perhaps misplaced?
I know of marriages wherein, to quote Gordon Lightfoot, "I don't believe we've had a word all day, about anything at all... ."
Be that as it may.
You pairing of writers with media outlets is laugh out loud funny, thanks.
BTW, Ariel Bitran was I think even younger than Stephen Mejias.
ATB,
JM
GL is a fave.
Ariel Bitran was not a reviewer or print columnist, to the best of my knowledge, so I don't see how he can be included. And he bolted.
But you are right, I don't recall his being in the print issue.
jm
At least he didn't die at the switch like HP..
..or on the throne...
Laughing....
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