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

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...am here to tap through the walls.



Mon Jul, 13 2009

"First Lab On The Left"

Ricketyclick links an item that I saw the other day, and I thought, "That figures." Zombietime walks us down memory lane with Obama's Assistant for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. John Holdren was a compadre of the notorious kook Paul Ehrlich. Go have a glance at the book that they authored together in 1977. He is now ascended to the eminence of "czar".

Let's just suppose, ladies and gentlemen, that Holdren no longer subscribes the particular object of his view, stated thirty years ago, that "Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction". Somehow, this man has come to power in a political party which holds "reproductive rights" as one of its strident tenets, and really doesn't believe anymore in a "planetary regime" with the power of forced abortion and mass sterilization.

What I would like you to think about is the assertion of "balance", and consider the prospect that this man even now views your life -- you, yourself -- as anything more than an insect to be managed in his own personal laboratory. You can take that bet if you want to. In any case, just be reminded that he subsists on your productivity. More: he acts on your sanction. This person is one of myriad "delegations" to representative democracy that are taken for granted as implicit every other year in the national voting hysteria. Look at the explication, kids. If he now only believes one-tenth of what he did in 1977, he would still be enough to make an American's blood hot with defiance.

And there he sits. Would "take politics out of science" -- from the seat of a "czar". He has "wasted years" to make up -- at bringing America into line with slugs and poofters the world over who have still never produced on the general level that our forebears did. He's bringing "new regulations" that will prevent scientific advice from being influenced by politics -- in a culture of euphemasia: the murder of truth by dissociation of the language from reality. What you're seeing here is the assumption of science by politics. This is a wholesale expropriation of science by conceptual and linguistic perversion: the disclaimer of politics in a manifestly political arena arrives as a command to ignore the reality of politics as "scientific" motive.

You live because of science. The apprehensions of reality which are the task of science are applied now everywhere around you to scope and degree not dreamed of by giants only two centuries ago, and you live as you do because of fantastic efforts to bring these understandings to wide practical benefit on scales economically sufficient to make them possible.

All of that is now subject to the assertions of people like John Holdren and those who hired him stroked him into his commissariat. Do you understand? Never before has the essential intellectual dynamo that sustains human life been so comprehensively in the hands of collectivist ideology in America. They have a lot to tear down, these nicely-dressed savages who would dictate the terms and conditions of your life.

How can you wait until the next election while they're doing that?

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}