This day in music - March 2, 1983: The first CDs become available in the U.S.

By Richard K. Barry 

(Ed. note: I would just like to note that this post violates my rule that this blog, like my car, be a Billy Joel-free zone, with the possible exception of "Piano Man." I like that song a lot. But far be it from me to censor Richard. Blame him, not me. -- MJWS)

Apparently, on March 2, 1983, CBS Records released 16 titles on CD in the U.S. The first CD to be manufactured was The Visitors by ABBA in Germany in 1982. The first album to be released on CD was Billy Joel's 52nd Street, which reached the market alongside Sony's CD player CDP-101 on October 1, 1982 in Japan. I guess that means the ABBA recording was produced before 52nd Street but released after.

And, to confuse things further, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA was the first compact disc manufactured in the United States for commercial release, when CBS opened its CD manufacturing plant in Terre Haute, Indiana in September 1984. Discs previously had been imported from Japan.

I am not entirely sure which 16 titles were released in the U.S. by CBS on March 2, 1983, but 52nd Street was put out by CBS Records, so it stands to reason that it was one of the 16.

For the record, Rolling Stone magazine lists 52nd Street as among the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Here's "My Life" from the album, which, according to the YouTube post, was taken from a November 2006 performance in Tokyo.

(Cross-posted Lippmann's Ghost.)

The horrendous human costs of your beloved gadgets

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you like your iPhone, do you? And your iPad? And maybe you're even one of those Apple cultists. (I'm not, but I do love my iPod Touch. I go Samsung/Android with my phone.)

Maybe you love all your gadgets. Maybe you think technology has made your life so much better, so much more fun. Hey, I hear you.

But there's a cost to be paid, and not just whatever low, low, ridiculously low price lured you into your local Best Buy. No, there's a human cost. Actually, many human costs. And it's important that you (and I) know about it (and make decisions accordingly):

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple's products, and the company's suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers' disregard for workers' health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning. 

And then there's that whole suicide problem. (Yes, a very serious problem. In addition to the suicides themselves, workers at Foxconn, a manufacturer for Apple and others, have threatened mass suicide to protest the horrible working conditions.)

Now, sure, it's easy to pick on Apple and it's huge profits and cash, but it's hardly alone in this. Pretty much every major (and not-so-major) consumer electronics company is implicated.

Will this stop me, or you, or most anyone else from lapping up the latest wonder-gizmo? Maybe not, but, then, what are we to do? Not have these gadgets at all? Please. We need our superphones and tablets and laptops and PCs. I'm on them all the time at home, at work, pretty much everywhere.

But maybe we should at least think twice (or more) about what we're doing, and maybe, if Apple (to take but the most obvious example) is one of the most egregious players in this horrific system, it should pay -- and pay by losing customers, by having customers demand better of it. And perhaps, too, our attention and habits, should we change them in a meaningful way, and the attention this human toll is getting, will turn this into a political issue with governments demanding, and requiring, meaningful change.

Maybe I'm hoping for too much. Actually, I'm sure I am. And I know I'm a hypocrite. Most of us are. But I do know I look at Apple quite a bit differently now, and if making a choice means choosing the less bad of some generally bad options, well, that's something, at least.

Food for thought next time you're playing Angry Birds.

Apple's Siri for iPhone is anti-abortion (and not terribly supportive of women's reproductive health generally)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I realize that Siri, the much-ballyhooed AI "personal assistant" for the iPhone is a work-in-progress and, from what I understand, produces some, er, interesting results when you ask it something, but it would appear that, with respect to women's reproductive health at least, it has a decidedly right-wing bent:

Ask the Siri, the new iPhone 4 assistant, where to get an abortion, and, if you happen to be in Washington, D.C., she won't direct you to the Planned Parenthood on 16th St, NW. Instead, she'll suggest you pay a visit to the 1st Choice Women's Health Center, an anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) in Landsdowne, Virginia, or Human Life Services, a CPC in York, Pennsylvania. Ask Google the same question, and you'll get ads for no less than 7 metro-area abortion clinics, 2 CPCs and a nationwide abortion referral service.

Ask in New York City, and Siri will tell you "I didn't find any abortion clinics."

It's an experience that's being replicated by women around the country: despite plentiful online information about actual places to get an abortion, Siri doesn't seem to provide it. It's a similar experience for women seeking emergency contraception: in New York City, Siri doesn't know what Plan B is and, asked for emergency contraception, offers up a Google results page of definitions.

Was this intentional? It's hard to see how it could not be -- how could Planned Parenthood not be Siri's first answer? -- and it reminds me that I was probably right to get a new Android phone last week instead of an iPhone (though I do have an iPod and use iTunes).

It could be that Siri was programmed so as not to be seen to be an enabler of abortion (though of course this would also mean it was programmed to be extremely conservative on women's health and "opposed," if it can be understood that way, to abortion rights. I really don't know. Maybe there's some other reason for it. But it looks awfully suspicious.

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Apparently Siri doesn't know much about gay marriage or mammograms either.

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Now, while Siri may be on the right on women's health, it is decidedly libertarian on other matters. Apparently it will direct you to find Viagra, pot, strippers, and a blow job. All you have to do is ask.

Good times.

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Yes, I realize that 2001's HAL 9000 is supposed to represent IBM, which is decidedly not Apple. But of course there wasn't Apple at the time and, well, the connection between HAL and Siri is just too obvious to ignore.