(second block, fourth letter of the prisoners' quadratic tap code...)

image
...am here to tap through the walls.


Wed Dec, 06 2006

Abounding Horrors

"...it’s not for me to say. In the end, our energy is better spent advocating for a society where those factors won’t matter."
To whom?

Dr. Darshak M. Sanghavi doesn't bother to wonder. Evidently, it's enough for prospective parents to ask doctors for deaf or dwarf children through preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

I know people who've insisted on speaking to their toddlers in toddler-talk. You know; the sort of language that could only possibly appear more ridiculous than hearing an adult using it on a child by attempting to spell it out in print. "But it's soooo cute!" they've told me, when I have had the bloody nerve to point out that this matter of rearing children is not about whether they amuse their parents, but rather about making sure that they become functioning human beings. These things are not pets.

What on earth could be exactly as horrible as deliberately setting out to bear a deaf child?

It's pretty bloody easy for someone like Sanghavi to sit around and flat ignore the ethics of this. He's not the one to face every single minute of a life like that: crippled. There: I said it right out loud like it's not supposed to be said anymore. He likes to blither about "rich, shared culture". This is none of that. It's measly, deprived bigotry, proposed to "parents" with no fundamental idea what the word means, and blessed by ethical monsters.

This is just sick.

Dec 06, 06 | 4:09 am

AxeBites

Various guitars I see floating by, mostly Gibson and mostly eBay.

Early Norlin ES-335 -- 1970, in Walnut ("ES-335TDW"). This is a period-piece look and feel, and arguably the sound as well but that's to cut things very finely. A "classic" 335 would be the original of 1958 in the Sunburst or Natural finish, or the Cherry Red of 1959; the Walnut of 1970 (second year of that finish offering) is not really a "classic" 335. In the history of the Gibson aesthetic, this is analogous to, say, vertically-striped polyester bell-bottoms or Bahama Blue shag carpeting. None of this is to say that they're not cool guitars, and this is a nice one. Excellent photographs.

Chrome hardware, featuring the trapeze tailpiece (like my L-47 and I've always liked it) and ABR-1 bridge with period-typical nylon saddles. Bound rosewood fretboard, with small block markers, and then the crown inlay at the machine head. These would be the T-top Humbuckers. Vintage Nazis would moan that the upper bouts are pointy (the body templates were wearing-out in the factory) and the fourteen-degree machine head with the volute signals a sometimes not-fun era of the line, but these things really do rock or moan or whatever you want a 335-type semi-hollow to do. ...which, of course, is because it really is a 335.


In the months since I've let AxeBites languish all to bleedin' hell, Gibson's Robot Guitar technology has sifted out to other models than the original Les Paul application. I don't know how it's going: I still haven't even seen one of these self-tuners. I don't see piles of them burning on the sides of the highway, nor reverent hangings in display cases over bars, so who knows? This 2008 Robot SG is ready to rock in the Metallic Red. Nickel hardware; it's the stoptail wired for data to send to the tuners, with dual Humbuckers. It's a bound rosewood fretboard, but I really like the single-bound machine head with the crown inlay. That's a real cool old-school look, right there, to set off that crazy-ass color. {nod}