Stradivarius and perfection (and annoying mics)

The microphone was broken. After all the fuss of updating drivers, nearly having a heart attack due to error messages stating that our sound card was corrupted (anybody notice a pattern here?) and fiddling around with a million different settings, we bought a new mic, and it worked beautifully (we needed a new one anyway; the old one was held together by duct tape and faith. Plus, the new thing only cost twenty-five RMB).

Yesterday, as I was scanning the headlines on Yahoo, I noticed an article about Stradivarius violins and why they were "perfect". How can a violin be perfect? Wood isn't perfect, nor was Stradivari. How can two imperfect things make something perfect? Anyhow. Supposedly, cool weather caused the wood then to be denser, which is why the violins are superior (not perfect!). Then I got to thinking about violins. If one was perfect, and if the player's technique was also perfect, would the violin really sound that much better than a Stradivarius? Probably not. So what is perfection? And was it there?

I've been toying with the idea of starting another blog just for book reviews. We'll see, but not until I actually have books to read, which will be a while. *anguished cry*