Matthew Yglesias (July 01, 2008) - Low-Fidelity All-Stars (Miscellaneous)

That's a bad a** Marantz tape recorder. Analog or not, that's pretty standard pro equipment.

Posted by El Cid | July 1, 2008 8:37 PM

It's a Marantz, I bet that after a bit of processing, assuming a good quality tape (where you get those, I have no idea), the sound quality will be rather good.

Old and good is better the new, cheap, and digital in many cases, especially for voices (as opposed to music, etc.).

The whole linear non-searchable format, well, that is kind of hard to deal with.

Posted by abject funk | July 1, 2008 8:39 PM

A bunch of blowhards flying to Aspen so they can have face time and share "ideas" is a more antiquated notion then the continued use of a high quality cassette recorder. Why don't all you luddites have an online teleconference and share your "ideas" with millions of people online with streaming video instead? Surely everyone that can afford a trip to Aspen has internet access so it's not like you are restricting access to a single soul. What's that you say? The entire enterprise is DESIGNED to be a wankfest in a posh resort town and is only PRETENDING to be a serious examination of ideas? That's some idea.

Posted by joejoejoe | July 1, 2008 8:56 PM

my favorite ex girlfriend was rummaging through a box of my stuff one day. She pulled out a Dire Straits tape and said "huh. My dad has a bunch of these." I knew at that point our days were numbered.

Posted by roboticghost | July 1, 2008 8:57 PM

I said hallelujah, to the sixteen loyal fans

Posted by TheF79 | July 1, 2008 9:07 PM

Joejoejoe has it right.

If the "face time" actually produced some ACTION that in turn produced some RESULTS, it might be worth it over some sort of online conferencing.

Otherwise, it's bullshit. As he put it, a "wankfest".

Which, of course, is why our favorite wannabe pundit is there. Most of these people he's referencing in these posts I've never heard of - and from the posts, I'd say that's a good thing.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 1, 2008 9:34 PM

yeah. probably someone was just too cheap to buy a fancy new "digital" recorder so they've been lugging that around since 1978.

Posted by JB | July 1, 2008 9:37 PM

Every military linguist of a certain age is definitely familiar with a Marantz. I've spent more time pushing the buttons on a Marantz than I've spent pushing the buttons on a woman, thats for sure.

Posted by calipygian | July 1, 2008 9:37 PM

The entire enterprise is DESIGNED to be a wankfest in a posh resort town and is only PRETENDING to be a serious examination of ideas? That's some idea.

Remember Scooter Libby's love note to Judith Miller about how Aspens are joined at the root and turn in clusters? Thats the real reason for Aspen Wankfests - to reinforce the ties that all the Villagers share.

By going to Aspen, you are a Villager, young Matthew. Your transformation is complete and the Dark Side of the Force is powerful in you, young Yglesias.

Posted by calipygian | July 1, 2008 9:43 PM

Quite apart from the fact that it might be a piece of awesome pro-audio gear with good quality... good field-recording technique is all about redundancy. If your new-fangled digital recorder craps out, or your finger slips and hits the wrong button, you might not find out until the session is over. At which point it is too late to do it again. And you'll be happy that your ancient tape deck was running as a backup.

Pro audio equipment isn't replaced overnight... it's augmented, then gradually rotated out. The only reason not to run the tape deck is if you're constrained by limited space or limited electricity.

Podcasters are always telling stories about how their primary recorder somehow failed to start, and their secondary recorder ran out of batteries, so thank god they were also recording with their laptop using the tiny built-in mic...

Posted by Anonymous Nitpicker | July 1, 2008 9:45 PM

Matthew Y.,

If it's not broke, there's no reason to replace it. It sounds like the Low-Tech movement may be gaining momentum. Thanks for posting.

Posted by S.P. Gass | July 1, 2008 9:50 PM

The Marantz has retro cred and all, but an Edirol R-09 or Zoom H2 or Tascam DR1 are all good, extremely portable, easy-to-use, affordable digital (flash) alternatives, and with them you've immediately got digital files ready to edit etc. -- they'll record MP3 files that are then very easy to download to a laptop. And they have extremely long recording times on an SD card. The Edirol will record 57 hours or more of MP3 (depending on sample / bitrate) to an 8 MB card, for example. And it fits in your shirt pocket, and has decent battery life with 2 AAs. Times have changed.

Posted by live | July 1, 2008 9:57 PM

calipygian - I hope 30 years from now we don't see Matt writing bad Japanese bestiality fiction and raping America (and or vice versa) in service to VP Liz Cheney.

Note: You can view the wankfest panels online at the link below so let me peel a grape in tribute to the fine tech team at The Atlantic. That still doesn't explain the need to splurge for this wankfest in Aspen in the first place. Roots indeed.

http://www.aifestival.org/index.php

Posted by joejoejoe | July 1, 2008 10:02 PM

I have a request. Can you address the impending naval blockade of Iran our Congress is tossing around as if it's not an act of war?

Posted by brenna | July 1, 2008 10:06 PM

I've got turntables and buy music on vinyl, but I don't do it because it's convenient. I have to wonder why someone whose job it was to record a conference or whatever would choose audio tape no matter how high quality their machine may be. I'm having trouble conceiving of what advantages it would confer... I guess if you don't mind spending the extra time making it digital, it's no big deal, but I think it's gotta slow you down relative to somebody who is all digital but less cool with their retro vibe.

Posted by J.W. Hamner | July 1, 2008 10:08 PM

live - Those flash audio recorders are cool. I wonder how many reporters use the flash recorders vs. the microcassette recorders? The cost of a flash recorder is like 10x as much but it allows you to upload and archive all of your recorded notes and then reuse the material ways that the microcassettes just can't match. Marantz even makes them!

Posted by joejoejoe | July 1, 2008 10:18 PM

I'm not going to blog anything at the moment on the panel Ross moderate on "is higher education for everyone"...

Do you ever proofread your posts?

Posted by tom | July 1, 2008 10:32 PM

I have to wonder why someone whose job it was to record a conference or whatever would choose audio tape no matter how high quality their machine may be.

If something still works it's hard to get anyone to pay to replace it.

Back in the mid-90's I bought a pro hi-8 to VHS dubbing deck for some amount of money that hurt. When it had outlived the VHS era, I turned it into a VCR for my son. Someone broke into the house and stole the thing, and what killed me was that the thing I'd spent a few thousand dollars for probably got traded for a ten-rock of crack. Never mind that probably by then that was all it was really worth.

My first video job it was not an easy task to try and tell the guy that the tube cameras he had bought in the 80's for a quarter million dollars were basically junk.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 1, 2008 10:39 PM

I can't be the only one who saw the title of this post and thought it was going to be a post on Vitter, Craig, and Fosella?

Posted by Kiran | July 1, 2008 10:45 PM

"Do you ever proofread your posts?"

You must be new here.

Second Brenna's request, too. If that Iran bill passes, Cheney will have all he needs to start an Iran war within a couple months. The ships are already in the Gulf to start blockading Iran.

And the Iran bill looks set to pass because the Democrats have already signed off on a war with Iran by funding $400 million for military operations in Iran that they aren't even informed about.

That was the main takeaway point from Sy Hersh's article and the meaning of the title: that Bush is now conducting covert ops through the Pentagon as opposed to the CIA - so he doesn't have to explain them to the Intelligence Committee or senior Congressional people under a Finding. He can simply claim it all falls under his prerogative as "Commander in Chief".

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 1, 2008 11:32 PM

RSH, you put your ass on the line making predictions. You do so in a really, nasty, arrogant manner.

I'll make my own. Watch this. Bush won't do a goddamn thing, he is selling wolf tickets because that's what his IR team, steeped in a certain school of game theory tells him he has to do. The posturing and rhetoric should be understood as such by the dullest Iranian intelligence operative.

Do you understand what an Iranian blockade would do to the price of gas? In an election year? Four dollars my ass, you would be talking about something that would drive the American economy to it's knees. Food riots in major American cities. It's just not going to happen before the election. Just maybe they are crazy enough to poison pill an Obama win with something like that post-election, I hope not the Bush admin seems to be scrambling desperately for anything that would vindicate them historically and presiding over an event that led to the sort of catastrophe that a shutdown of the Persian Gulf would lead to isn't in the cards.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 1, 2008 11:43 PM

Sorry, Ed, you just don't get it.

The oil companies and the military-industrial complex do not give a damn what the price of gas does in an election year. They only care that the price of gas goes up and a war starts that means more military contracts paid for by taxpayer money.

The neocons attacked Iraq with the intention of using Iraqi oil to break OPEC. The oil companies shut that plan down, but they supported the war because they wanted Iraqi oil off the market. Go read Greg Palast's articles on that subject. Google for "Palast Iraq oil".

The point is, the neocons and the oil companies really didn't care if the price of gas went up - and the neocons who supported Israel didn't care either. And the military contractors Dick Cheney works for didn't give a damn either.

And five years later they STILL don't give a damn, as you can easily see by the policies still in effect in Iraq and the plans for permanent bases and the right to attack foreign nations from Iraqi soil which is in the SOFA deal.

If you can't see that, and you can't see that Bush and Dick Cheney don't think like you do, I don't know what to tell you - except wait and see.

Besides which, the goddamn Israelis REALLY don't give a damn about the price of gas in the US. They WILL attack Iran with or without US permission if the US doesn't do so. And the net result of that will be the US is in the war, like it or not.

If you think all this Iran war planning and the movement of military assets into the Gulf and rhetoric and diplomatic stone walling and Petraeus lies and confrontations in the Straits and secret meetings with the Israeli military and the like is all just pointless rhetoric to establish Bush as some sort of "tough guy", you just don't get it.

Yeah, Bush cares about his "legacy" - and he thinks attacking Iran will establish that. You think he isn't that stupid, crazy and greedy? The last eight years has proven nothing to you?

Good luck with that.

In any event, if the Iran blockade bill passes, we'll see movement on that front fairly soon. There's only six months left for Bush to make his move. We'll know who's right before long.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 1, 2008 11:57 PM

Oh, and keep in mind that if Bush launches his attack with proper timing, the price of oil may spike, but the price of gas won't spike sufficiently to affect the election. And after McCain wins the election, it won't matter what the price of gas is - the election is a done deal - as is the war.

It's easy to predict what will not happen. Are you prepared to predict what will happen with Iran? Apparently you think there's no "end game" in all this? You think Bush and Cheney are just going to go out blustering, Israel does nothing, then Obama comes in and...what? Obama makes an offer, and the Iranians just give up enrichment? There's some back and forth and eventually the Iranians do a North Korea and blow up Natanz?

You believe that?

Here's the reality. Iran will never give up enrichment (except possibly a short term suspension for serious negotiations - if Obama actually offers that.) Where does that leave ANY concept of the Iranian nuclear program that is acceptable to both the US and Israel? How do you resolve that impasse? Sanctions? Diplomacy? How?

There are two possible outcomes: the US blinks, restrains Israel and Iran keeps enriching, or Iran is attacked. There is no third possible outcome, whether McCain or Obama wins. Somebody is going to have to blink to avoid an Iran war. Do you think Obama will blink? Fine. Will Obama prevent Israel from launching their own attack? Who knows?

Your personal belief that just because it's crazy that Bush and Cheney won't do it really isn't relevant to what is going on and the underlying logic of the situation.

Either the US (and Israel) blinks or there will be an Iran war. It's that simple.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 2, 2008 12:16 AM

Time tells.

I've been hanging around MY's blog since before the invasion of Iraq. My prediction for Iraq was that it was going to turn into a super-sized Lebanese civil war. That's about exactly what happened but I didn't yell at people that they were blind beforehand or after.

Israel may indeed attack Iran before the election. You wouldn't see a U.S. blockade if that happened, you would watch Bush offer tepid to warm congratulations while the 5th fleet backed the fuck away from the Strait of Hormuz as fast as possible and quiet work at the U.N. to keep the Security Council from any sort of official condemnation.

We'lll see.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 2, 2008 12:16 AM

That really is a badass Marantz deck. You'll probably get another decade out of it.

I wonder how many reporters use the flash recorders vs. the microcassette recorders?

Though the MiniDisc is long dead as a consumer tech, there are still people using MD for reporting, just as there are small radio stations that use them instead of carts -- though that's moving over to drive storage. (DAT had more cred: recorders like the Sony PCM-M1 DAT were prized for field work a decade ago.)

I have a (somewhat retired) Sony MD recorder that allows you to mark cuts and section breaks with the buttons, which is useful if you don't have a laptop/upload/editing source at hand.

The Edirol is sweet, though.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 2, 2008 12:44 AM

First thought: Hey, what's my tape recorder doing there? This was, 20--25?--years ago, the sine qua non of professional radio equipment. Search the vicinity for an alter kocker with a Jesse Jackson '84 sticker on the car.

Posted by citizenstx | July 2, 2008 1:13 AM

Well, as to your last scenario, I CAN see it going something like that, at least initially. Here are a couple of scenarios.

1) Bush launches a small strike against an "insurgent training camp" in Iran before the election.

2) Iran essentially ignores it - publicly - while ratcheting up pressure on the US in Iraq.

3) This eventually escalates into a full war but it might take some time and further incidents. McCain gets a small bounce in the polls but not enough to win.

Another scenario:

1) Israel launches a single strike against the Natanz plant, either with US permission or somehow without US permission (say, by using cruise missiles from their subs.) The US denies any involvement other than granting permission for Israeli aircraft to overfly Iraq.

2) Iran condemns it but does NOT - immediately - retaliate full on against either Israel or the US. Eventually it ratchets up the pressure on the US in Iraq and increases its support for Hizballah.

3) The election is unaffected either way.

This stuff is small potatoes, however. It does nothing to adjust the fundamental problem that Iran must and will continue to enrich - and the US - including Obama - and Israel have boxed themselves into a diplomatic hole by insisting that Iranian enrichment is completely unacceptable. There's no way the US will ever compromise sufficiently to allow Iran to believe that they should give up control of their own nuclear fuel cycle.

Sooner or later that has to be resolved. And the Israelis don't think Obama can do it in their favor (and I think they're wrong about that, but that's on them.) So that means either McCain has to win the election - and attack Iran - or Israel has to do it - or Bush has to do it before he leaves office. For the Israelis, there is no fourth option.

And if I'm correct and the primary motivation for both Iraq and Iran is 1) oil, and 2) war profiteering, then clearly an Iran war is definitely in the cards. Dick Cheney and the oil companies want the Khuzestan oil fields, and he also wants Halliburton and KBR and the rest of his military-industrial complex cronies to continue profiting from war in the ME. And the only issue about attacking Iran is how they can do it without getting themselves impeached or arrested as war criminals if they go to Belgium some day, or screwing up the Republicans before the election this year. In other words, it's all a timing issue for them.

I thought they'd do it in 2006. But obviously they considered what would happen in the 2008 Presidential elections if the war went badly - and it will. So they held off. Josh Bolton, the President's Chief of Staff, is supposed to have said, "The Dems will lose over Iran." I thought he meant in 2006. Now it's clear he meant in 2008.

As I've said, if they time the attack for right before the elections, in time for a "war bounce" for the Republicans but not too soon so that the war and the oil spike takes effect, there's no downside to them doing it. None. They'll deal with the problems the war causes in 2012 then - probably by blaming it on Obama if he gets elected.

But for Bush and Cheney, they're out of office. What do they care? Bush has his "legacy" and Cheney has his Halliburton stock. It costs them nothing to do this. Nothing at all.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 2, 2008 1:24 AM

t does nothing to adjust the fundamental problem that Iran must and will continue to enrich - and the US - including Obama - and Israel have boxed themselves into a diplomatic hole by insisting that Iranian enrichment is completely unacceptable.

That's just total horseshit. Everyone knows it. The arms control wonks know it. The Iranians are going to opt into reprossessing like every other country in the world has. Even the idiotic neo-cons left over in the Bush administration know it and are biting their tongues. See North Korea for where that whole school of thought has been relinquished to.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 2, 2008 1:46 AM

People, please.

1) Israel cannot "launch a strike" against Iran without our help. They don't have planes with the range. So they'll either have to fly over Iraq -- where we'll be refueling them -- or they'll be lobbing verbal missives with no megatons.

2) If we (USA) attack Iran, things in Iraq get exponentially worse. Every sentient officer in the United States military knows this.

3) The execrable collection of numbnuts in this White House are capable of fucking up a cheeseburger, so anything is possible from here on out. They've already given us $4.30 gasoline, and driven GM and Ford to the brink. Why not fuck the whole international economy?

Posted by stickler | July 2, 2008 2:20 AM

Jews! Zionists! Israel! Haim Saban! Joooooooooooooooooos!!

Posted by Richard Williams ford | July 2, 2008 2:49 AM

"The Iranians are going to opt into reprossessing like every other country in the world has."

Never happen - unless the US demonstrates great seriousness by demanding Israel disarm its nuclear arsenal.

Iran has been worked over for decades by the West. They are not going to allow anyone to control their nuclear fuel cycle - just like Japan. They are perfectly willing to allow a consortium of nations to run the fuel cycle plants - as long as one of them is on Iranian soil.

See this interview for the whole North Korea fiasco:

Scott Horton Interviews Gordon Prather
June 28th, 2008
http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/06/28/gordon-prather-6/

Dr. Gordon Prather, Antiwar.com’s in-house nuclear physicist, discusses the chaos of the Bush regime’s policies against the “Axis of Evil” and global non-proliferation regime, from trying to frame North Korea with the same bogus intel as they used on Iraq to trying to connect Iran and North Korea with the Israeli-bombed facility in Syria, the U.S.’s nuclear deals with India, how A.Q. Kahn’s stolen intel scheme was falsely claimed by George Tenet to be a CIA success story, the vague credentials of nuke “expert” David Albright Ph.D and how the Bush team has put us in far more danger from nuclear proliferation.

MP3 here: (52:09)
http://dissentradio.com/radio/08_06_26_prather.mp3

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 2, 2008 4:25 AM

Stickler:

1) Not entirely correct. Israel has the fighter bombers and support aircraft to get to Iran. They just don't have enough fuel to get back - which merely means they will land at a US air base, refuel, then fly home. You think the US is going to refuse landing rights in an Israeli military emergency?

The real problem for Israel is they don't have enough bomb tonnage or weapons types to take out the entire Iranian nuclear facilities which are scattered all over.

BUT - if all you're trying to do is START a war that the US will be dragged into, who cares, right? The war starts, Iran drops a few SCUDS on Israel, big deal (unless one of those missiles hits the Dimona nuclear plant, which Iran says they will.) Israel will survive it. Meanwhile, the US takes the major brunt of the resulting war.

Typical Zionist logic: get your friends to do your fighting for you. As Don Rickles used to say, "Here's $500! Keep attacking!"

2) And every sentient US military officer will obey the orders from the White House to conduct the Iran war. Everybody knows it will be a disaster. So what? Most people knew Iraq would be a disaster. See point 3 below.

3) This is my point - Bush and Cheney aren't going to be harmed IN ANY WAY by starting a war with Iran. They're going to walk and they're going to profit - as will all their cronies in the oil companies and the military-industrial complex. The taxpayer money will keep rolling in and rolling right back out to the corporations while the "campaign contributions" (read: bribes) keep coming right in to the pockets of both the Democrats and the Republicans.

The Iran bill to blockade Iran now has 270 House supporters and upwards of 30 in the Senate version. It's guaranteed to pass. It's a declaration of war on Iran by the House and Senate.

Both bills were drawn up and submitted by AIPAC through their tame Congressmen.

Ed's "riots in the streets"? Hah! What do you think those corporations design "non-lethal crowd control" weaponry under military contract for?

As I've repeatedly said, there's NO downside to them doing this. Plenty of downside for us - none for them.

That was true in Iraq and it's going to be true with Iran.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 2, 2008 4:40 AM

I used to own that Marantz deck. It's mono. Really.

But it was hugely popular with musicians in the pre-digital era, because it was the only casette deck with pitch control (to put it in tune with your piano), a half-speed switch (to slow down out fast-moving music and transcribe it) and a nice reverse cue button (hold it down to rewind just a little bit, release and play resumes automatically).

Nowadays, you can just select a slice of waveform on a computer and get a spectral analysis that shows you what the notes are. And you can slow down or speed up to any aribrary speed without changing the pitch.

I feel old.

Posted by DJA | July 2, 2008 5:37 AM

I think that anyone who says "there are only two ways this thing can go" lacks both imagination and historical perspective.

Posted by Daddy Love | July 2, 2008 10:00 AM

Ed Marshall -

Reprocessing and uranium enrichment are very, very different things. Iran is not reprocessing. Read up. Learn the difference. Understand the situation.

Once you do, you will, for example, understand why ony right-wing idiots claim that NK was "creating nuclear weapons" Under Clinton prior to the Bush administration's missteps and fiascoes.

Posted by Daddy Love | July 2, 2008 10:06 AM

Was he running Schoeps or Neumanns? Or did he go all the way retro and bust out the Nak guns?

Posted by Steve Balboni | July 2, 2008 10:18 AM

Daddy Love: Give us an example of your imagination on how the Iran situation could go that doesn't involve 1) the US blinking, or 2) Iran blinking.

You're correct about NK. As Gordon Prather pointed out in his interview with Scott Horton, IIRC. the North Korean reactor apparently was modified to run on natural uranium, not enriched uranium at all.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 2, 2008 5:11 PM

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