“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” Alphonse Karr

I couldn't resist the quote for the title of this post. I was using my updated version of Stumble Upon when I came upon HyperHistory which is, in itself, an interesting site. However, being possessed of natural curiosity, I clicked one of the links on the home page, and that link took me to...well, the following excerpt from MacroHistory:

A vociferous debate was taking place among Christians, with some Christians denouncing those who no longer believed in taking the scriptures literally. Among the denouncers was Billy Sunday - born William Ashley. He had been a farm boy from Iowa and a hard drinking, woman chasing outfielder for the Chicago White Stockings. He was the country boy awed and tempted by the big city called Babylon, and he continued to describe himself as brawling with the devil. "Hitting the sawdust trail" with his revival specialists and huge choir, he liked to preach the gospel wearing a good suit and expensive shoes. He preached with emotion and a rapidity of words, mixing wisecracking, slang and baseball terms, attacking rum, prostitutes, card playing and gambling. He railed against science, Galileo, Plato, Darwin, intellectuals in general and the modern world. He admitted that he knew nothing about theology, but he felt qualified to denounce Christians who no longer believed in heaven and hell. He was quick to proclaim his patriotism, and he announced that immigrants complaining about working conditions should "go back to the land where they were kenneled."

Reading that, I could close my eyes and see some of our current Fundamentalist Christian preachers lip syncing to Sunday's preaching. It is more than a little discouraging to see that memes circulating through our culture can be this persistent. Billy Sunday could walk into a meeting of the Left Behind crowd, and feel right at home because those people would still be mouthing the ignorance he preached over 100 years ago. One of the biggest mistakes progressive folk make is to think that ignorance is easy to erase. It isn't. Which is why the great explosion of progressive, liberal thought and action from the Sixties and early Seventies has actually produced far less change than one might have thought.

What a difference!

I forget exactly when I bought the Yamaha stereo receiver...it was either 1978 or 1979...but, when I bought it, it was a really top-of-the-line receiver. It has been my primary music system for all these intervening years, and I thought that it drove those JBL speakers pretty well. At least I did until about two weeks ago. I have to admit that over the past few years...OK, maybe more than a few...the sound quality has deteriorated a little...OK, a lot, and the left channel has gotten a little tempermental--you have to give the receiver a couple of whacks to get that channel actually putting out sound--recently.

About a month ago I saw a neat little gadget for sale on Woot: a transmitter that you can use to hook up your computer to your stereo...now you can stream that music anywhere in the house. I bought one, but now I needed to get the stereo actually working. So, I went out to buy a new receiver. I had been cruising the Best Buys and Circuit Cities of late, and had found a Sony unit that was selling for under $200. I figured Sony was a good name and that the price was right, At least I did until I talked to the sales guy. He looked at me with a certain amount of pity and condescension, then took me over to the other side of the audio show room. There he pointed out a high-end Denon and a comparable Sony system. Then he asked me one question, "Why, if the two units are roughly comparable in their specs, does the Denon cost about twice as much as the Sony? What can possibly cause that difference in price?" (OK, technically that's two questions...quibble, quibble, quibble.) Then he pumped some sound from the Sony through the speakers, and did the same for the Denon unit. WOW!! The difference was palpable even to my poor ears.

Then he took me to the front of the store and showed me a Denon unit that was on sale 'cause it was out of the box. It was about $100 more than the Sony, but he assured me that the sound was worth it. I am here to report that he was right. Those JBL's haven't sounded this good maybe forever. I find myself moving into the living room with the old laptop rather than work in my office. I sometimes stand in front of the speakers and wallow in the richness of the sound emanating from them. It is soooo cool. I can hardly stand it!

Sometimes life is good!