curling

On today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast, the guys share the mics with longtime friend Clayton Morris of "Fox and Friends" and co-host of the Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe.

Anyone who listens to our show on a regular basis knows that very little preparation goes into each episode, but we always have a great time with Clayton, and today we spend the first half of the show talking about Jeff's appearance on NPR's All Things Considered, where he spent some time speaking with host Robert Siegel about his concerns over racism in multiplayer video games. After Wilson spends some time drooling over Siegel's baritone radio voice, Clayton tell us about his humble beginnings in the broadcasting industry and even does a few spot-on impersonations of New York's local television anchors.

After the break, Clayton tells us about his brief but educational sojourn into the armpit of the Internet that is Chat Roulette. Acting as the illegitimate child of Omegle and Skype, the site uses your Webcam to pair you up in a video chat room with a stranger on the Internet.

Clayton and the three of us attempt to describe the most common shared experience on CR: what might seem like a completely innocent Web site used to create new friendships across the world quickly falls flat on its face as you're faced with the worst the Web has to offer. Racism, misogyny, nudity, and pornography are just a few of the scenes you'll witness, so enter at your own peril, and don't forget to breathe...it's just a Web site.

If you're not in the "club," high-end audio might look like a bastion of elitist snobs and the idle rich, so it may come as a shock to note that some of high-end audio's greatest engineers started out in rock and roll. Take John Curl, in the early 1970s he worked his magic on the Grateful Dead's concert and recording sound systems and later kept the Jefferson Airplane aloft. That was just before he tackled film sound in Hollywood. All of that led to collaborations with high-end pioneer Mark Levinson; together they raised the stakes, considerably, with the JC 2 stereo preamplifier in 1974.

It didn't matter that the JC 2 was two or three times more expensive than any other component in the nascent high-end market; a lot of folks lucky enough to hear it and afford it bought it. The JC 2 had that effect on people. Curl and Levinson soon parted ways and over the next few years Curl designed a long run of cutting edge electronics for other companies. Levinson eventually departed the company that bears his name, and his old company now designs car audio systems for Lexus. High-end is in the big time now.

When I heard that Curl had finished work on an all-new Halo Series JC 2 stereo preamplifier for Parasound I had to check it out (it's like hearing that Carroll Shelby just built a new AC Cobra). Better yet, for this review Parasound sent along a pair of the matching Halo Series JC 1, 400 watt mono power amplifiers. I reviewed the all-new JC 1 & JC 2 combination for Home Entertainment magazine, you can read the review here.

The JC 1 is a seriously powerful amplifier, its output stage employs nine pairs of high-current bipolar transistors with massive heat sinks to insure long-term reliability. Each amplifier can deliver 400 watts to 8 ohm rated speakers, and 800 watts to 4 ohm models, and if your speakers ever dip as low as 2 ohms, the JC 1 will happily serve 1,200 watts! The JC 1 sounds potent, even when listened to at merely moderately loud levels, and maintains its composure at lease breaking, call-the-cops volume. … Read more

We at Crave aren't just about shiny, superficial gadgets--we care about superficial issues of personal appearance as well. Recently, for example, we highlighted a zit-zapping treatment for some of the younger readers of this blog. Now, for the other end of the age spectrum, we offer another public service announcement for the "HairMax LaserComb."

This device, which looks sort of like a curling iron for an Anakin princess, is designed to regenerate and thicken your hair using laser energy. Don't laugh: Medgadget says it's even gotten FDA approval.

This is scientific stuff, people. HairMax … Read more