How To Hack Your Holiday Memories

“What if we could choose which memories of the holiday season – or any season – will stand out most vividly and which we’re content to let fade with the passage of time? While it isn’t possible to do this with an exacting, sci-fi level of precision, it is possible to use some basic findings about human memory to increase the odds that you will remember that amazing New Year’s party but forget that Christmas-dinner squabble over Obamacare.”

Streaming Liberates Obsessive Collectors From Endless Record Shows (And More)

“I had arrived in the promised land — or at least Spotifyland — no more bulky records and CDs strewn about my home requiring alphabetization, no more ripping, no more glitchy files downloaded nefariously from KaZaa needing to be retitled and volume equalized, no more agonizing how I would parse my eMusic allowance, no more checking and unchecking tracks in iTunes so I could get just the right 19,873 songs on my iPod classic.”

Google Starts To Publish Song Lyrics Online

“According to reports, Google has begun including lyrics in the results pages for certain search terms . When US-based users search for phrases like “stairway to heaven lyrics” or “comfortably numb lyrics”, the words to these songs appear at the top of the page, above the corresponding listings for third-party sources.”

Conductor Jerzy Semkow, 86

“Semkow’s idiosyncratic and somewhat imperial personality didn’t always mesh well with American orchestras; this was a man sometimes seen strutting around backstage at Orchestra Hall wearing a cape. Semkow favored broad tempos, fleshy textures and flowing phrases that sighed with lyricism. He knew what he wanted, and it was usually a kind of clarified spiritualism, beauty and understanding.”