the music Compact Disc -- happy 25th birthday! Just in time for extinction!

"The Visitors" by ABBA -- the first CD, manufactured on 17 August 1982 at a Royal Philips Electronics factory in Langenhagen, Germany.

It's the 25th Anniversary of the music Compact Disc.

Meanwhile, American television ads this month (maybe Radio Shack) are showing a thrilled young woman who has just convinced her husband or boyfriend to throw out all his junky old CDs (and maybe some ancient LPs) and to get rid of all his bulky old stereo equipment -- the pre-amp, the power amp, the tuner, the receiver, the equalizer -- and replace it all with intangible mp3s and an iPod in a dock attached to a pair of itty-bitty speakers.

His stereo system and music collection once weighed a ton and occupied an entire wall.

The new rig which has made her so happy -- she can put it in her purse.

I live in a small house with a small living room. Don't even ask me what I did with my beloved JBL Studio Monitors last year, to give S.W.M.B.O. more floor space. Moan. Weep.

This is an Evil Development. Music should be Tangible. You should be able to touch it and shoplift it and look at it; it SHOULD take up space and have volume and mass.

Also the frequency response and dynamic range of mp3s sux compared to CDs. In terms of music fidelity, this is a Giant Step Backwards. (There's still a never-ending debate about which format, analog LP or digital CD, reproduced quality -- e.g. classical symphonic -- music better.)

My analog LP phonograph records (invented by CBS/Columbia research director Peter Goldmark) used to get annoying scratches all the time, and then sometimes I'd get annoying scratches on my CDs, which produced that odd sound like a toy robot stuck in an exercise wheel at High Speed.

But an entire Django Reinhardt album never just suddenly vanished and sent me a message: FILE NOT FOUND.