So in my searches for information about saxes in Korea, I’ve come across a couple of facts that are pretty interesting. Selmer saxes are WAY overpriced here. A Selmer bari sax runs about W10,000,000, which, yes, is about $10,000 American, and something like $11,000 Canadian. A used one in really poor shape runs about $9,000 Canadian. Several shops have quoted me figures like that. The well-reputed Yanagisawa saxes are more affordable—perhaps shipping from Japan is just cheaper? Or maybe it’s the fact that Yamaha has a bad rep here, and Selmer is the horn everyone thinks is the best (and …
Month: December 2004
What The End of CDs Might Mean, In Fact
Here’s an interesting piece on copyright. If you ignore copyright laws and download content, then good content will cease to be created for you. This is the fundamental argument put forward by contributing editor Stephen Manes, in this month
Recommendations for Students
I’ve just finished the first class-and-a-half worth of testing for the week. I have a couple of recommendations for students: If you find English difficult, then I recommend studying harder, and more, as a solution to the problem. Not studying, I find, tends not to resolve the problem at all. If you fail English in your second year and require the class to graduate, and if you don’t manage to improve your English skills somehow, the least you can do is not leave it to the second semester of your 4th year, because you’ll probably still suck at English then. …
여자의 새상 (The Lives of Women) and False Consciousness
Yesterday I was taking a taxi downtown when I encountered a big chip on a cab driver’s shoulder. We were passing a group of cops who’d formed a Sunday afternoon traffic trap near the bridge downtown. Well, someone woman had just been stopped by a cop (for speeding in a busy downtown area, a rare example of enforcing laws which save lives) and was calling someone for aid—perhaps her father or uncle or something, I don’t know. Anyway, the cop tried to get her to cut off her phone call, and she simply turned her back on him and kept …
If you can smell garlic, everything is all right.
So wrote SF author J.G. Ballard once upon a time. John Wendel recently sent me a link to a New York Times article about a collection of quotables from Ballard’s ouevre. Gotta read more Ballard, the man is one of those good old Brit SFers who’s gotten halfway to mainstream somehow, without losing the piercing criticism and edge.