Koss PortaPro Headphones
The other day we did a review of the SanDisk Sansa Clip MP3 player, which seemed a solid choice for the frugal consumer. A necessary accessory is clearly a pair of headphones or ear-buds or such. So here’s a brief look at one option, namely the Koss PortaPro headphones. They are listed at $50 but at the time of writing sell for $39.99 on Amazon.
They’ve been around a long time and seem to be quite popular. Their advocates maintain that the Koss PortaPros are a nice, affordable and portable alternative to high-end headphones. They are said to have a frequency response of 15 to 25,000 Hz. If that means a lot to you, so be it. I’m not going to belabor the technical issues. Is the sound significantly better than the $10 earphones I was using before, which I picked up somewhere I can’t remember? I cannot really assert that it is, to me. In my experience one tends to hear things pretty darned clearly through headphones or earphones that are working properly, just so long as there is not excessive ambient or background noise. (The Koss PortaPro headphones are not the noise-cancelling variety.) The chief difference I’ve found with the Koss PortaPros is instead in the area of comfort. They are well designed in this regard. I have a very large head (as you might well imagine) but these expand to fit comfortably and easily. A key comfort feature is the small cushion on each side which rests above the ears, thus reducing the pressure of the cushioned ear plates. The ear plates also pivot. So, after putting them on and adjusting them for comfort, they are very unlikely to annoy you at all, as opposed to those ear-bud things which can chafe after a short while. The metal band which goes over your head might be noticeable or might catch your hair when you’re removing it, but I suppose that’s a trade-off for portability. [Read more →]
I’m not a heavy user of portable music players. I like to listen to music the old-fashioned way: at home, in front of the speakers of my stereo system, not only hearing the music but feeling its vibrations through the floor and the air. Short of hearing it live, this seems like the most natural way of listening to music. However, when traveling or when out and about for long periods, it is certainly nice to be able to bring along some music to make the time go more pleasantly. Until recently, this occasional need was satisfied by an old Creative Zen V Plus 2GB MP3 player. It accompanied my wife and me on various trips for years, but lately has been erratically refusing to play when called upon to do so. It was time to send it to the farm where they keep the old carriage horses and those turkeys spared by presidents through the ages.
for $34.95, and perhaps even less elsewhere. 
It’s just possible that I have recently stumbled upon the explanation for the age-old mystery of “spontaneous combustion.” That’s the alleged phenomenon whereby a living thing—including most notably a human being—suddenly bursts into flames for no apparent reason. I was in bed, and our small dog was lying near the bottom of the bed, atop the bedspread, as is her wont. Her precise position was less than ideal in relation to my feet and she needed to be shifted a little bit. I have become adept at sliding her over a few inches without unduly disturbing her; or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that she has become adept at ignoring the fact that she is being slid over, thus allowing me to do it. It was completely dark in the room. I placed my hands on either side of her curled up body and gently began shifting her over. It was then that I noticed distinct if small flashes of light emanating from her body. It took me a few moments to take in what I was witnessing and to arrive at a conclusion as to what was taking place. I realized that these flashes of light could only be sparks, caused by static electricity. The heat had been on steadily in our apartment for some weeks, and I had already noticed that everything seemed pretty dried out. I’d gotten some static electric shocks myself, and the dry air was affecting my nasal passages and such. Still, this was another level of seriousness, surely; that is, the possibility that my dog might burst into flames upon my bed. 
“Revisionist Art: Thirty Works by Bob Dylan” is on show at New York City’s 
The two images being used to promote the show—”BabyTalk” and “Playboy”—are quite typical of what you’ll see if you visit. Is it high art, or is it just humor somewhere on the level of “MAD” magazine? (That’s one magazine cover which is not featured, by the way.) I would say more the latter than the former, but I have neither the credentials nor the motivation to make a definite determination. One thing did occur to me: Whatever these things look like now, they will be quite a bit more interesting if they are exhibited one or two hundred years from now, as a visual commentary of sorts on America from about 1960 to 2012 by the late, great figure of that time, Bob Dylan. (Though that still doesn’t mean they are necessarily great art.)
notebook computer.
I like to tell myself that I make my computers earn their purchase price, and then some. My chief working computer for nearly the past six years has been a Dell Vostro laptop. When I bought it (if I’m not mistaken) George W. Bush was in the White House and Dennis Hastert was still Speaker of the House. (“You don’t say, Grandpa! And the wolves in Wales?”) I never upgraded the operating system from XP or even boosted the 1 GB RAM with which it came. The machine served me very well, frankly. Any significant problems I had while using it were always software-based. Until, that is, the most recent problem, when it abruptly shut off while I was doing nothing in particular. It just went “pfft,” like an old TV set being turned off. It wouldn’t go back on, then, but it did some hours later, as if nothing had happened. Still, I had to believe that the old boy was telling me to prepare for the day when he just wouldn’t be able to spin that hard disk anymore. It was clearly time. 
I purchased the RCA RP5435 AM/FM Clock Radio with an extra-large 1.4-inch display yesterday. And yes, I did it because (without my glasses on) I am virtually blind, at least when it comes to objects at a distance. I did not buy this clock radio for the various sexy selling points described on the box, such as the automatic time-set (which just means it’s preset at the factory, by the way), or the audio input for an mp3 player (I like waking up to the news headlines; I guess getting angry and disgusted helps me get out of bed), or the “programmable snooze & sleep” (I can’t imagine a single circumstance where I’d want to use that). I bought it because I wanted a clock radio with big numbers that I could easily see when I wake up in the middle of the night. 
It’s a dog’s life. That expression was originally coined and used to characterize a life of misery (where you might be treated like a dog, get sick as a dog, and die like a dog). In more contemporary times it’s often heard and used in exactly the opposite sense, that of a dog’s life as one of carefree laziness, with every want fulfilled. Since dogs have, in many societies, gone from working beasts thrown scraps to pampered pets who shop at canine boutiques, it’s not hard to understand how the expression has garnered its new meaning. 
