7/4

Here's the one I traded for the Tele:

and...

and another

here's another...

March 19, 2008 Chinese Leader May Talk With Dalai Lama By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 10:39 a.m. ET LONDON (AP) -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Wednesday that he is prepared to hold discussions on Tibet with the Dalai Lama, Brown said. Brown said he spoke with Wen to call for restraint after violent protests in the biggest challenge to Chinese rule in Tibet in almost two decades. ''I made it absolutely clear that there had to be an end to violence in Tibet,'' Brown told lawmakers in the House of Commons. ''I also called for constraint, and I called for an end to the violence by dialogue between the different parties. ''The premier told me that, subject to two things that the Dalai Lama has already said -- that he does not support the total independence of Tibet, and that he renounces violence -- that he would be prepared to enter into dialogue with the Dalai Lama,'' Brown said. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wen's remarks to Brown did not describe any change in Chinese policy toward the Dalai Lama. China says that it is willing to talk to the Dalai Lama once he renounces independence and recognizes that Tibet and Taiwan are part of China. The communist leadership says the Dalai Lama has not sufficiently shown that he has renounced independence, and officials have pointed to the latest violence in Lhasa as proof. ''The most important thing at the moment is to bring an end to the violence, reconciliation, and to see legitimate talks taking place between those people and China,'' Brown added. Brown pledged to meet the Dalai Lama during his visit to London in May.

Yeah. #1 (headstock damage) was the one I returned, the replacement (warped fingerboard problems) for that one was traded in for the '52 Tele. This second one (was double shipped to me, they never sent a call tag to return it), got a new tailpiece after the original tore in half. Phew! I like it now. I'd like to replace the p/up with a humbucker.

Now a days, my taste in guitars run more along the lines of Telecasters and archtop guitars. I have a '52 Tele reissue in butterscotch (the only color) and a '96 MIJ Tele Thinline with a Seymore Duncan humbucker in the neck. I own a D'Angelico Excel EXL-1... but I'd love a Sadowsky.

The Carvin V220, a pointy guitar I desired back in the mid-'80s. I never bought one...

March 18, 2008 Protests Expose Rifts Among Tibetans By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 6:48 p.m. ET DHARMSALA, India (AP) -- Tibetan exiles saw a chance to put China on the spot ahead of the Beijing Olympics, but never expected their protests to spread to Tibet and turn violent. Now the Dalai Lama is threatening to quit if his people don't return to peaceful resistance. It's a warning he has used before -- telling Tibetans to return to peaceful protests during 1989 unrest -- but this time it comes amid deep divisions within the Tibetan community between those who back his pacifist approach and an angry young generation that demands action. While the situation inside Tibet remains unclear, much of the violence last week appears to have been committed by Tibetans against Han Chinese -- a fact that troubles the 72-year-old Dalai Lama, who has long called for Tibetans to have significant autonomy within China ''Whether we like it or not, we have to live together side by side,'' the Dalai Lama told reporters Tuesday in the northern Indian hill town of Dharmsala, seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. ''We must oppose Chinese policy but not the Chinese. Not on a racist basis.'' Though fearful of a Chinese crackdown -- he compared the plight of Tibetans to that of ''a young deer in a tiger's hands'' -- the Dalai Lama insisted he could not abide violence by his own people. Peaceful protest is the only way, he said. He said that if the situation gets out of control, his ''only option is to completely resign.'' An aide later clarified that the Dalai Lama meant he would step down as the political leader of the exile government -- not as the supreme religious leader of Tibetan Buddhists. Regardless, his call for Tibetans to work with the Chinese stands in stark contrast to the ''Free Tibet'' chants of thousands of Tibetan youths, Buddhist monks and nuns who have marched the steep paths of Dharmsala in recent days, angry faces painted with Tibetan flags and chests smeared with blood-red paint. They want action not diplomacy, independence not autonomy. ''There is growing frustration among the younger generations. They have been talking for 20 years and nothing came out of it,'' said Tsewang Rigzin, head of the Tibetan Youth Congress. He urged ''the protesters in Tibet to continue in their protests until China gets out of Tibet.'' While hesitant to directly criticize the Dalai Lama -- who is deeply revered by Tibetans -- and careful not to endorse violence, the younger activists warn that patience with his approach is running thin. ''I certainly hope the middle way approach will be reviewed. The Tibetan nation and Tibetan culture are on the verge of extinction,'' Rigzin said. Another activist, Tenzin Choedon, a 28-year-old student, said: ''It is time for a change in Tibet and the Tibetan movement.'' The activists argue that the Dalai Lama is squandering a golden opportunity by not opposing China hosting the Olympics. ''We have to seize the opportunity of the Olympics,'' said Rigzin. ''We have to shift the spotlight while the whole world is watching to show the true color of China.'' The Youth Congress and other exile groups began a Dharmsala-to-Tibet walk on March 10 -- just before Beijing was to kick off its Olympic celebrations with a torch run through Tibet. It was also the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising in Tibet that forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India. When Indian authorities stopped the first march just days after it began, the exiles embarked on a second attempt. It's a far more antagonistic approach than the Dalai Lama prefers. On Tuesday, he urged the marchers to abandon the project, saying it would only spark confrontation with Chinese troops at the border. ''Will you get independence? What's the use?'' he asked. Yet even the Dalai Lama understands the anger of the young. ''In recent years our approach has had no concrete improvement inside Tibet, so naturally (there are) more and more signs of restlessness, even inside Tibet,'' he said. The turmoil in Tibet also has laid bare the inability of Tibetans to capitalize on the intense exposure to their cause and extract concessions from China. ''We are helpless,'' said Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan exile government, echoing comments by the Dalai Lama. The government announced Monday that it was setting up a committee to coordinate the actions of Tibetan groups during the crisis. But word has not reached every group. ''So far we have not heard from them,'' said B. Tsering, head of the Tibetan Women's Association, which is taking part in the march to Tibet. Despite China's charge that the Dalai Lama and his supporters planned the uprising, the protests in Tibet and cities around the world were spontaneous -- organized by local Tibetan groups and their sympathizers, B. Tsering said. ''If this continues I'm afraid the Tibetan people might lose control. It could get difficult,'' she said. ''Lots of demonstrations are decided on by the young people and we can't control them. The Dalai Lama insists pacifism is the only path to saving Tibet from the ''cultural genocide'' that he sees being inflicted by Han Chinese migration to Tibet and the communist regime's religious restrictions. ''Our only strengths are justice and truth,'' he said. ''Force is immediate, but the effects of truth sometimes take longer.''

Nice. I have an '85-'86 Ibanez Roadstar with a Floyd Rose, nice when it would stay in tune. It hasn't been out of the case in years. I should check it out and see how it's doing these days. I find locking tuners a lot more dependable. Just like this, except I swapped out all the pickups. and like mine, it was probably powder blue, then aged into this green thing.

I had that happen a couple of times with headphones. .

Something like that. .

Well, there really isn't anything to do except hoping that China eventually adopts a freer political system and maybe applying cosmetic pressure in that direction. Guy I know it's just an opportunity to put pressure on Tibet. I'm waiting to see if anything happens this time.

Gibson Moderne, The Moderne (80's "re-issue") The original '50's model may have never existed off of paper and the 80's version is gaining value. I always thought they looked very cool.

March 19, 2008 Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 By GERALD JONAS, NYTimes Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90. Rohan de Silva, an aide, confirmed the death and said Mr. Clarke had been experiencing breathing problems, The Associated Press reported. He had suffered from post-polio syndrome for the last two decades. The author of almost 100 books, Mr. Clarke was an ardent promoter of the idea that humanity’s destiny lay beyond the confines of Earth. It was a vision served most vividly by “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the classic 1968 science-fiction film he created with the director Stanley Kubrick and the novel of the same title that he wrote as part of the project. His work was also prophetic: his detailed forecast of telecommunications satellites in 1945 came more than a decade before the first orbital rocket flight. Other early advocates of a space program argued that it would pay for itself by jump-starting new technology. Mr. Clarke set his sights higher. Borrowing a phrase from William James, he suggested that exploring the solar system could serve as the “moral equivalent of war,” giving an outlet to energies that might otherwise lead to nuclear holocaust. Mr. Clarke’s influence on public attitudes toward space was acknowledged by American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, by scientists like the astronomer Carl Sagan and by movie and television producers. Gene Roddenberry credited Mr. Clarke’s writings with giving him courage to pursue his “Star Trek” project in the face of indifference, even ridicule, from television executives. In his later years, after settling in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mr. Clarke continued to bask in worldwide acclaim as both a scientific sage and the pre-eminent science fiction writer of the 20th century. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Mr. Clarke played down his success in foretelling a globe-spanning network of communications satellites. “No one can predict the future,” he always maintained. But as a science fiction writer he couldn’t resist drawing up timelines for what he called “possible futures.” Far from displaying uncanny prescience, these conjectures mainly demonstrated his lifelong, and often disappointed, optimism about the peaceful uses of technology — from his calculation in 1945 that atomic-fueled rockets could be no more than 20 years away to his conviction in 1999 that “clean, safe power” from “cold fusion” would be commercially available in the first years of the new millennium. Popularizer of Science Mr. Clarke was well aware of the importance of his role as science spokesman to the general population: “Most technological achievements were preceded by people writing and imagining them,” he noted. “I’m sure we would not have had men on the Moon,” he added, if it had not been for H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. “I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.” Arthur Charles Clarke was born on Dec. 16, 1917, in the seaside town of Minehead, Somerset, England. His father was a farmer; his mother a post office telegrapher. The eldest of four children, he was educated as a scholarship student at a secondary school in the nearby town of Taunton. He remembered a number of incidents in early childhood that awakened his scientific imagination: exploratory rambles along the Somerset shoreline, with its “wonderland of rock pools”; a card from a pack of cigarettes that his father showed him, with a picture of a dinosaur; the gift of a Meccano set, a British construction toy similar to American Erector Sets. He also spent time, he said, “mapping the moon” through a telescope he constructed himself out of “a cardboard tube and a couple of lenses.” But the formative event of his childhood was his discovery, at age 13 — the year his father died — of a copy of Astounding Stories of Super-Science, then the leading American science fiction magazine. He found its mix of boyish adventure and far-out (sometimes bogus) science intoxicating. While still in school, he joined the newly formed British Interplanetary Society, a small band of sci-fi enthusiasts who held the controversial view that space travel was not only possible but could be achieved in the not-so-distant future. In 1937, a year after he moved to London to take a civil service job, he began writing his first science fiction novel, a story of the far, far future that was later published as “Against the Fall of Night” (1953). Mr. Clarke spent World War II as an officer in the Royal Air Force. In 1943 he was assigned to work with a team of American scientist-engineers who had developed the first radar-controlled system for landing airplanes in bad weather. That experience led to Mr. Clarke’s only non-science fiction novel, “Glide Path” (1963). More important, it led in 1945 to a technical paper, published in the British journal Wireless World, establishing the feasibility of artificial satellites as relay stations for Earth-based communications. The meat of the paper was a series of diagrams and equations showing that “space stations” parked in a circular orbit roughly 22,240 miles above the equator would exactly match the Earth’s rotation period of 24 hours. In such an orbit, a satellite would remain above the same spot on the ground, providing a “stationary” target for transmitted signals, which could then be retransmitted to wide swaths of territory below. This so-called geostationary orbit has been officially designated the Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union. Decades later, Mr. Clarke called his Wireless World paper “the most important thing I ever wrote.” In a wry piece entitled, “A Short Pre-History of Comsats, Or: How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time,” he claimed that a lawyer had dissuaded him from applying for a patent. The lawyer, he said, thought the notion of relaying signals from space was too far-fetched to be taken seriously. But Mr. Clarke also acknowledged that nothing in his paper — from the notion of artificial satellites to the mathematics of the geostationary orbit — was new. His chief contribution was to clarify and publicize an idea whose time had almost come: it was a feat of consciousness-raising of the kind he would continue to excel at throughout his career. A Fiction Career Is Born The year 1945 also saw the start of Mr. Clarke’s career as a fiction writer. He sold a short story called “Rescue Party” to the same magazine — now re-titled Astounding Science Fiction — that had captured his imagination 15 years earlier. For the next two years Mr. Clarke attended King’s College, London, on the British equivalent of a G.I. Bill scholarship, graduating in 1948 with first-class honors in physics and mathematics. But he continued to write and sell stories, and after a stint as assistant editor at the scientific journal Physics Abstracts, he decided he could support himself as a free-lance writer. Success came quickly. His primer on space flight, “The Exploration of Space,” became an American Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Over the next two decades he wrote a series of nonfiction bestsellers as well as his best-known novels, including “Childhood’s End” (1953) and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). For a scientifically trained writer whose optimism about technology seemed boundless, Mr. Clarke delighted in confronting his characters with obstacles they could not overcome without help from forces beyond their comprehension. In “Childhood’s End,” a race of aliens who happen to look like devils imposes peace on an Earth torn by Cold War tensions. But the aliens’ real mission is to prepare humanity for the next stage of evolution. In an ending that is both heartbreakingly poignant and literally earth-shattering, Mr. Clarke suggests that mankind can escape its suicidal tendencies only by ceasing to be human. “There was nothing left of Earth,” he wrote. “It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the infant plant while it climbs towards the Sun.” The Cold War also forms the backdrop for “2001.” Its genesis was a short story called “The Sentinel,” first published in a science fiction magazine in 1951. It tells of an alien artifact found on the Moon, a little crystalline pyramid that explorers from Earth destroy while trying to open. One explorer realizes that the artifact was a kind of fail-safe beacon; in silencing it, human beings have signaled their existence to its far-off creators. Enter Stanley Kubrick In the spring of 1964, Stanley Kubrick, fresh from his triumph with “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” met Mr. Clarke in New York, and the two agreed to make the “proverbial really good science fiction movie” based on “The Sentinel.” This led to a four-year collaboration; Mr. Clarke wrote the novel and Mr. Kubrick produced and directed the film; they are jointly credited with the screenplay. Many reviewers were puzzled by the film, especially the final scene in which an astronaut who has been transformed by aliens returns to orbit the Earth as a “Star-Child.” In the book he demonstrates his new-found powers by detonating from space the entire arsenal of Soviet and United States nuclear weapons. Like much of the plot, this denouement is not clear in the film, from which Mr. Kubrick cut most of the expository material. As a fiction writer, Mr. Clarke was often criticized for failing to create fully realized characters. HAL, the mutinous computer in “2001,” is probably his most “human” creation: a self-satisfied know-it-all with a touching but misguided faith in his own infallibility. If Mr. Clarke’s heroes are less than memorable, it’s also true that there are no out-and-out villains in his work; his characters are generally too busy struggling to make sense of an implacable universe to engage in petty schemes of dominance or revenge. Mr. Clarke’s own relationship with machines was somewhat ambivalent. Although he held a driver’s license as a young man, he never drove a car. Yet he stayed in touch with the rest of the world from his home in Sri Lanka through an ever-expanding collection of up-to-date computers and communications accessories. And until his health declined, he was an expert scuba diver in the waters around Sri Lanka. He first became interested in diving in the early 1950s, when he realized that he could find underwater, he said, something very close to the weightlessness of outer space. He settled permanently in Colombo, the capital of what was then Ceylon, in 1956. With a partner, he established a guided diving service for tourists and wrote vividly about his diving experiences in a number of books, beginning with “The Coast of Coral” (1956). Of his scores of books, some like “Childhood’s End,” have been in print continuously. His works have been translated into some 40 languages, and worldwide sales have been estimated at more than $25 million. In 1962 he suffered a severe attack of polio. His apparently complete recovery was marked by a return to top form at his favorite sport, table tennis. But in 1984 he developed post-polio syndrome, a progressive condition characterized by muscle weakness and extreme fatigue. He spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair. Clarke’s Three Laws Among his legacies are Clarke’s Three Laws, provocative observations on science, science fiction and society that were published in his “Profiles of the Future” (1962): ¶“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” ¶“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” ¶“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Along with Verne and Wells, Mr. Clarke said his greatest influences as a writer were Lord Dunsany, a British fantasist noted for his lyrical, if sometimes overblown, prose; Olaf Stapledon, a British philosopher who wrote vast speculative narratives that projected human evolution to the farthest reaches of space and time; and Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.” While sharing his passions for space and the sea with a worldwide readership, Mr. Clarke kept his emotional life private. He was briefly married in 1953 to an American diving enthusiast named Marilyn Mayfield; they separated after a few months and were divorced in 1964, having had no children. One of his closest relationships was with Leslie Ekanayake, a fellow diver in Sri Lanka, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1977. Mr. Clarke shared his home in Colombo with his friend’s brother, Hector, his partner in the diving business; Hector’s wife, Valerie; and their three daughters. Mr. Clarke reveled in his fame. One whole room in his house — which he referred to as the Ego Chamber — was filled with photos and other memorabilia of his career, including pictures of him with Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. Mr. Clarke’s reputation as a prophet of the space age rests on more than a few accurate predictions. His visions helped bring about the future he longed to see. His contributions to the space program were lauded by Charles Kohlhase, who planned NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn and who said of Mr. Clarke, “When you dream what is possible, and add a knowledge of physics, you make it happen.” At the time of his death he was working on another novel, “The Last Theorem,” Agence France-Presse reported. “ The Last Theorem’ has taken a lot longer than I expected,” the agency quoted him as saying. “That could well be my last novel, but then I’ve said that before.”

I'd like to see this happen. Maybe it's time for the world to finally do something about the Tibet situation. .

I know I do. Joe Morris is an original. .

I saw 2001 in the movies when it came out with my Dad & sisters. .

March 18, 2008 Arthur C. Clarke, Writer, Dies at 90 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 5:43 p.m. ET COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90. Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said. Clarke moved to Sri Lanka in 1956, lured by his interest in marine diving which he said was as close as he could get to the weightless feeling of space. "I'm perfectly operational underwater," he once said. Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer. He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits. He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.

Anthony Braxton / Joe Morris 4 Improvisations A 4 CD set This historic edition — Clean Feed’s one hundredth release — is a four-disc set that features two extraordinaire musicians who before this session had never played together: multi-reedist Anthony Braxton and guitarist Joe Morris. “Four Improvisations (Duo) 2007” has other unique qualities. One is that Braxton has rarely recorded completely improvised pieces. More typically he plays compositions, his own or occasionally jazz standards, and improvises within their structures. His compositions can include open forms and spaces that require creativity of himself and his fellow musicians, but it is structured music. Morris, conversely, more frequently improvises freely, but he also often works within the parameters of composed pieces. On these discs, each one a continuous improvisation of approximately one hour, Braxton and Morris play free. We hear them discovering each other’s thought processes and musical strategies, while negotiating common places to interact. This first-time, marathon meeting follows in the tradition of other the duos between collaborations between woodwind master players and six-strings virtuosos, such as Lee Konitz and Billy Bauer, John Coltrane and Kenny Burrell, and Evan Parker and Derek Bailey.

The originals were nice in Korina natural. With few exceptions, pointy guitars don't do too much for me. Here's a neat one...

...and many more! .

His version of a Weissborn guitar, acoustic "steel" guitar.

Bring it on! If I ever find it...

Somewhere I have a '70s photo of me jamming with a buddy who had a Tele bass.