J Larsen

My non-expert opinion is that it wouldn't be much harder to cure than anything else, but it probably isn't very high on anyone's to-do list. They may find a treatment for something else that cures tinnitus in some people as a side effect. If they can make psychoactive drugs to tell your brain to make less stomach acid, it seems to me that they can probably make psychoactive drugs to tell your brain to stop making that damned noise (and I'm told it is usually more of a brain thing than a cochlea or auditiory nerve thing - evidently even cutting the auditory nerve doesn't cure it in many cases). Saw the doc today and he thinks the recent flair-up may be connected to the fact that I've also had migraine problems lately - he's not sold on the eardrum explanation, mostly for the reason I wasn't sold on it (looks like an old wound). The fact that it is changing in character is giving me hope that it will go away - I'd be more worried if it were staying steady.

Funny you said that - guess what cds I brought to work with me today... The tinnitus stopped getting louder, but it is changing in character. Sounds like I have a thousand crickets in my head now. It's annoying for sure, but like I said people have thrived under far worse circumstances.

I've always found a lot of Andrew Hill's work to be very contemplative.

I tried that last night. Even on its highest setting, the fan wasn't loud enough to mask the ringing. It's really freaking loud!!! At work, to concentrate I have to listen to music with lots of cymbals - cymbals mask it fairly well (especially if they're brushed). I've noticed that I can't hear it at all in the shower, and even after I turn the shower off I don't hear it for several minutes. I'm thinking of wasting some water and trying a *really* long shower to see if I can get some relief. Definitely hitting the ENT too. This is pretty bad, but people have thrived under worse circumstances.

I'm told it's basically a sure thing - if they can't chemically stimulate regeneration of the membrane, they repair it with a graft that I'm led to believe is as good as the real thing. I'm definately going to try it - can't hurt, might help.

I was exposed to a couple really loud construction sounds, and stuffiness in the ears accompanied the ramp-up in the volume. Clarinex made the stuffiness go away, but the ringing is still really, really loud (music, tv, etc don't drown it out). The Dr said I have a torn eardrum in the ear with the loud ringing, which can be repaired. I'd like to believe that this will improve the ringing, but the doc also said that it looked like it had been torn for a while, so that seems unlikely. BTW, I hate to rain on the hair cell regeneration parade, but those people doing the mice experiments are only trying to regenerate about 1% of the hair cells - just enough to make hearing aids effective in people whose hearing is so bad that they can't presently be helped by hearing aids.

Thanks - I've found the dramatically increased volume over the past couple weeks to be highly intrusive and was looking for some reassurance that people learn to live with it.

I've had tinnitus for about half my life - probably mostly due to too many rock shows and too few earplugs. It usually doesn't bother me but it's been loud as hell for the past couple weeks - sounds like an old tv with the volume turned all the way down, but about twenty times as loud (louder than dept store music, for instance). Anyone else have to deal with this?

The cable carries all the channels at once, just like the air around you carries all radio stations at once. In principal, the TV can pick out any number of stations at once. So in principal you can watch one channel and record another or have picture in picture, even without an external switch, depending on the limitations of the equipment you own.

I'm guilty on that count - and MBV and Dino Jr certainly didn't help - damn those bands were loud.

Was one of the Spacemen 3 guys also involved with the band Spiritualized? Guy Yeah, that was Jason's band after Spacemen 3 broke up. I assume Spacemen 3 was a better band? Guy It was a really different band. I always heard them as a very loud, droning take on 60s garage rock. I always liked them.

Haven't listened to it in a long time, but that was a great, great record. Terrible live band, though.

You kind of missed the point. Ingvar Kamprad, Ikea's owner (one of the world's richest men and former member of a pro-Nazi organization in Sweden after WWII) long ago transferred technical ownership of Ikea to a "charity" that is, in essence, a holding company. Setting it up as a charity is simply a tax dodge.

I had a dresser from them that definitely was, and I seem to remember reading that that was their primary material, but I could be wrong about that. I recently bought a kitchen counter from them that is all particle board except for the counter surface itself. If they aren't primarily using cardboard, I'm pretty sure that they are generally using particle board, which would be purchased as waste product from lumber and/or manufacturing companies. In either case, it is an environmentally friendly practice (with the caveat that, in my experience, the stuff doesn't have a very long life span).

Any idea where all their timber comes from? I can't imagine how much they process in a year's time. I believe most of their product is made from compressed cardboard.

I actually did know this, which was bad news for a girl I went out with recently. To try to demonstrate how clever she was, she bragged to me about how she loaded up on Ikea stock just as the housing boom was starting to take off. I didn't bother to get into a conversation on the ownership structure of Ikea with her.

Didn't see that until after I posted! That Silver Apples record is a nice piece to not have shreded. My cat got some choice Ayler/Lyons/Mingus/Beefheart and rap records (my vinyl wasn't alphabetized).

After having lived with my cat problem-free for three years, he recently decided that the spines of LP jackets make an excellent surface for scratching. I had to box up the collection and put it in the closet. I now have a bunch of otherwise very valuable records with completely shreded spines. It's not like I was planning on selling them or anything, but still...

I think the whole reason he practiced on the Brooklyn Bridge (rather than, say, in his own apt or in the middle of the street) is that no one lives on it.

Damnit! "Throw the squirrel at him" would have been a great option!

Well, that would have made the news, so everyone would have known not to choose that option. It may have been more fun to ask "what would you have done".

Apparently he thought it would be funny to wake up the block with some marching music.

I think we've passed freshman year and are now on to "relative ethics and economics of used CD sales and cd burning 201." See you guys tomorrow.

A CD is a commodity, just like a car, guitar, microwave oven or any other product that can be legally purchased. Ownership of any of those products can be transferred by sale, gift, etc. All producers of those products are paid upon initial sale of the item, and give up any further claim to that piece of product, don't they? Why should a CD be considered any differently? There's nothing ethically wrong with transferring ownership of anything you've legitimately purchased. There is something wrong with duplicating something for which you don't have that right. It's introducing additional product into the market at prices far lower than the going price (in the case of CDRs, essentially free product). How can anyone say this is legitimately good for anyone on the "producing" side of the equation? Fascinating thread, but let me complicate (muddy?) things further by again going back to my silly/hypothetical/still-unanswered question above. So if one does legally purchase music from iTunes (or wherever) and burns them onto a CDR, why does that not become physical property that can be legitimately transfered to another person? It's exactly like a used CD, with the artist getting the money initially (though by a different distribution system), and the first owner transfering it by sale, gift, etc. The RIAA would, of course, consider this illegal and wrong - and I'd suspect most of us would too. It is, legally, an illegal copy, but if legitimately paid for it should be exactly like a used CD (though obviously of less value since it lacks paperwork, etc.). It's not really the same as selling a "real" cd copy that you own if you're keeping the files from which you burned the disc. If you stipulated that you also destroyed the downloaded files, then you have a closer comparison.

Guy, I should have thought of this a couple pages back: Doesn't it stand to reason that the right to transfer ownership of a legit cd is priced into the original, new copy? And does it not follow that artists would expect to receive smaller royalties on new purchases if this right did not exist?