You know you are getting old when:

[3fingers]

And then I saw this article: Curing Patients Is Bad For Business.

From the article:
"But we have reached the limits of common sense and common decency."
Nah. Not even close. I'm not sure that there is a limit to craven indifference.

 

[tonyb]

From the article:
"But we have reached the limits of common sense and common decency."
Nah. Not even close. I'm not sure that there is a limit to craven indifference.

Best to keep that in mind whenever we are tempted to assume a pose of some natural moral superiority.

Germans in the 1930s and '40s were no more disposed by nature to genocide than were the people of America. And an ISIS executioner with the notches of a dozen beheadings on his knife handle wasn't born any more bloodthirsty than you or I.

We're all capable of evil. We are all but willfully blind to the moral outrages done in our name this very day. We may not be herding millions into chambers filled with poison gas, or lopping off heads for theatrical effect, but I have no doubt whatsoever that we could, provided we normalize less extreme homocidal behaviors along the way.

 

[scottyrocks]

You know you're getting old when, while only half way up a flight of stairs, someone you don't know who is younger than you is at the top holding a door open for you.

 

[tonyb]

You know you're getting old when, while only half way up a flight of stairs, someone you don't know who is younger than you is at the top holding a door open for you.

I frequently find myself playing either role in those little skits. Which role I take depends on the age of the other player, of course.

Still, I'm sure I can't possibly look as old as I look.

 

[3fingers]

I'm not sure how this works, but the guy in the mirror doesn't strike me as appearing remotely nearly as old as the same guy who appears in pictures snapped by my wife and others with their ever ready cell phone cameras.

 

[Zombie_61]

And then I saw this article: Curing Patients Is Bad For Business.

Zero surprise here; I've known this for decades. The real problem is that "medicine" and "health care" are, and for the most part always have been, run like any other business. If the people involved were doing it for truly altruistic reasons it would all be non-profit, or at least little profit, and everyone would get the proper care they deserve. But that'll never happen because there's far too much money to be made by the wrong people by keeping things as they are.

I'm not sure how this works, but the guy in the mirror doesn't strike me as appearing remotely nearly as old as the same guy who appears in pictures snapped by my wife and others with their ever ready cell phone cameras.

I've mentioned this somewhere here before, but my driving record has been so clean for the last 20+ years that the California Department of Motor Vehicles just kept mailing me my new licenses with updated expiration dates. As such, I hadn't had a new license photo taken in all that time. Apparently someone finally noticed, so last year I had to go have a new photo taken. Now when I look at my license, I don't recognize the old man staring back at me.

 

[SSuperDave]

As I celebrated my 27th wedding anniversary yesterday, I marveled at how it was possible, inasmuch as I am only 28 years old

 

[GHT]

Argh! This post made my heart race. I've wanted an MGB or Midget my entire life and never got one.

Redfokker. tonyb, scotty and anyone else silly enough to still hanker after an MGB GT, and in this case the V8 version. The V8 in the MGB is in fact a Buick designed engine and as many an owner here in the UK knows, anything Buick will just bolt onto it without fettling or adjusting. So if you really do still crave that early teenage, heart's desire and you live in Buick country, here's what you can have and easily get spares for:

It wouldn't even cost you an arm & a leg to have chromium plated wire wheels, if you so desired.

 

[scottyrocks]

I assume if it goes into the GT, it'll go into a droptop B, as well, or was the GT's cradle a separate entity for a V8?

 

[GHT]

I assume if it goes into the GT, it'll go into a droptop B, as well, or was the GT's cradle a separate entity for a V8?

The GT fastback body was designed by the Italian company Pininfarina, skillfully incorporating all the best features of The Sportster, open top MGB body. If it goes into the GT it goes into the open top MGB,

So what are you waiting for?

 

[tonyb]

I assume if it goes into the GT, it'll go into a droptop B, as well, or was the GT's cradle a separate entity for a V8?

The GT version is a stiffer body (as are most hardtop versions of sports cars) and therefore more capable of handling all that additional torque. Think of it like a six-sided box. Cut off the top and the box is considerably more wobbly. Many convertible version of cars are actually heavier than their hardtop siblings because of the additional bracing they require to be adequately rigid.

MGBs are true unibodies -- no "frame" per se, but structural sills (what we Yanks call rocker panels) and bulkheads fabricated from sheet steel. Not entirely ahead of their time, but on the vanguard.

Many is the enthusiast who has dropped one of those aluminum-block Buick V8s into his top-down MGB, though. Further upgrades to suspension and driveline components is recommended.

 

[scottyrocks]

What just flashed through my mind was putting a B body and interior on a VW chassis. The B and Karmann Ghia strike me as being fairly close, dimensionally. But I'd have to measure, of course.

Then again, they could be completely incompatible.

 

[GHT]

What just flashed through my mind was putting a B body and interior on a VW chassis. The B and Karmann Ghia strike me as being fairly close, dimensionally. But I'd have to measure, of course.
Then again, they could be completely incompatible.

When you can have the Ghia body on a Ghia chassis, why would you want to spend an arm and a leg converting it?

 

[tonyb]

What just flashed through my mind was putting a B body and interior on a VW chassis. The B and Karmann Ghia strike me as being fairly close, dimensionally. But I'd have to measure, of course.

Then again, they could be completely incompatible.

My first car was a Karmann Ghia, a '58 model. Porsche engines have found their way into Ghias, which is kind of an obvious route to take to serious power upgrade.

Still, I preferred driving the MGB over any car I've ever owned, and I've owned many interesting if not particularly valuable cars. Just a pleasure to drive, it was. Second place goes to an early '70s Datsun 510 station wagon I owned in the early 1980s. I'd gladly buy another one, if it were in decent shape and the price was right.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Best to keep that in mind whenever we are tempted to assume a pose of some natural moral superiority.

Germans in the 1930s and '40s were no more disposed by nature to genocide than were the people of America. And an ISIS executioner with the notches of a dozen beheadings on his knife handle wasn't born any more bloodthirsty than you or I.

We're all capable of evil. We are all but willfully blind to the moral outrages done in our name this very day. We may not be herding millions into chambers filled with poison gas, or lopping off heads for theatrical effect, but I have no doubt whatsoever that we could, provided we normalize less extreme homocidal behaviors along the way.

This jailhouse interview with serial killer Richard Ramirez seems to touch on this point.

 

[tonyb]

This jailhouse interview with serial killer Richard Ramirez seems to touch on this point.

There's a real piece or work (or something), eh?

It's knowing that people not so unlike the rest of us are capable of such actions that ought have us at least examining what we might do to prevent them from ever getting to that point. Maybe there is no preventing it altogether -- probably isn't -- so guarding against their ability to carry out their murderous deeds brings at least some measure of comfort. All the surveillance around these days comes at no small loss of privacy, but it also gives pause to any would-be murderer, at least those who hope to get away with it.

 

[3fingers]

Richard Speck was born in a small farm town in the same county where I was raised. My high school history teacher had him as a student. He always said the teachers agreed he was going to do something bad, they just didn't know what or when. Apparently he radiated a bad vibe even as a child.
Speck's crime bothered him until he died even though it was years after he had been a student.

 

[tonyb]

Richard Speck was born in a small farm town in the same county where I was raised. My high school history teacher had him as a student. He always said the teachers agreed he was going to do something bad, they just didn't know what or when. Apparently he radiated a bad vibe even as a child.
Speck's crime bothered him until he died even though it was years after he had been a student.

Yeah, I can see that. I'd imagine it's akin to what the friends and families of people who kill themselves feel. "What might I have done? How could I have missed the signs?"

Of course, it's the exceedingly rare creepy character who actually turns into a serial killer. Thank the god of your choice for that. No law against being creepy, and many a law against restricting peoples' liberties on that account alone.

I just now refreshed my memories of the Speck murders. I didn't need to be reminded of the photos of the victims splashed across the front pages of the papers back in the summer of '66 and what a hot topic of conversation it was. I didn't remember what a lengthy criminal history he had prior to that. Arrested 42 times in the state of Texas alone, from which he fled, seeing how he was a wanted man there.

 

[Zombie_61]

A good friend of ours had two indirect and coincidental connections with Richard Ramirez. First, in March of 1985 Ramirez broke into a house in Whitter, California, a house he had burglarized a year earlier, and killed 64-year-old Vincent Zazzara while he was sleeping. He then killed Mr. Zazzara's 44-year-old wife Maxine after she was awakened by her husband's murder. The Zazzara's house was literally around the corner from where our friend lived with her mother at the time (and less than a mile from my parents' house ). Second, after Ramirez had been arrested he was taken to a dentist to have molds of his "rotting" teeth made that would subsequently be used as evidence. This happened to be our friend's dentist, and she said her dentist told her that Ramirez was quiet but polite when he spoke, but that the energy in the room was so uncomfortable and oppressive that he didn't even want to be in the same room with him, let alone put his fingers in Ramirez' mouth.

 

[tonyb]

I -- like most of us, I presume -- understand the impulse to certain types of homicide. Hot-blooded murder, of a personal rival of one sort or another, is the most common type. No real mystery as to why.

But killing anonymous strangers is beyond my comprehension. I can ALMOST understand killing for money. Almost. But killing people one has never met and from whom one wants nothing except whatever it is one gets from the act of killing itself is something I am thankful I just don't get.