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

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Wed Jul, 15 2009

Half-Assed Utilitarian Morris

"And it is the elderly who rationing will most effect. Who should get a knee replacement a 40 year old or a 70 year old? Who should get a new hip, a young person or an old person? Who should have priority in the operating room a seventy year old diabetic who needs bypass surgery or a younger person? Obviously, it is the elderly who will get short shrift under his proposal."
Dick Morris explicates what has always been implicit. The foolishness of AARP in all this is just horrifying. This is like watching people dressed in their Sunday best, laughing and having a good time on line for the Zyklon B salad-bar.

His argument to this point is gold-plated. His conclusion is strictly atavist. Medicare must be destroyed as fast as possible. It is the coercive intervention against which no private endeavor can compete, and greatly responsible for the state of American medicine now. Reversion to a previous system-restoration point (to cop a Windows metaphor) will not do, because that is corrupt, too, and it was, first. The only reason that its destructive consequences have not been completely comprehensive is that it was a half-assed effort at socialism. Even so, it is something that is evil in its roots and branches and it cannot go on.

Morris understands the mechanics of the new Amsoc. Do not, however, mistake him for a principled man whose first political value is freedom.

Jul 15, 09 | 4:17 pm

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}