I just finished reading John Maeda's "The Laws of Simplicity", and I was struck by an application of one of his laws this morning. I was loading my iPod with some music and I wanted to add my Time-Life "Living the Blues" series to listen to today. I usually load just my favorites from the ~25 CD series but today I wanted to also add the ones that were not ranked five stars. I wanted to listen to some variety and I realized that my favorites weren’t so favorite unless they are contrasted with songs that aren’t my favorites, just like Maeda’s fifth law, DIFFERENCES Simplicity and complexity need each other. Maybe this is the purpose of radio and something that we have lost in the iPod/iTunes/web 2.0-get-what-you-want-when-you-want-it era that we are in?