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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... elephants/

There’s a paywall—sorry about that. The essay talks about his purchase of the Cameroon ebony supplier and his support of research on ebony sustainability. It turns out that elephants disperse ebony seeds in their dung.

A couple of quotes:
“ It’s a reminder that supply chains don’t begin in factories. They often begin in ecosystems, which are complex, interdependent and often poorly understood.”
“ The question isn’t whether businesses should help sustain the resources they use.
It’s whether they can afford not to.”

That is the thing I admire most about Bob - not just talk, action.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Interesting article, which matches my impression of Mr. Taylor garnered from his book Guitar Lessons as a consummate production engineer and businessman that happens to have built some guitars on the way to establishing a successful globally sourced manufacturing business. My only disappointment was that the Post is ultimately the Post, so failed to extend Mr. Taylor's argument (or admonition if you will) to our cities and states re: recognition that actively destroying or passively participating in destruction of a functioning ecosystem is never a good idea, and plumbing the depths of the Curley Effect is awesomely unwise.

'Way OT, but you got me with the 'Curley Effect'; I thought it might have had something to do with the Three Stooges. Despite having lived a good part of my life in the Boston area I had to look it up. My initial impression wasn't so far off....

For Boston, a lesson hard learned. Economic stagnation for two decades following Curley's last term. The silver lining seems to be that - at least through the mid-2010''s - Boston did a relatively good job of retaining their tech and manufacturing base. Lesson learned, but apparently not one that travels to other places well.

Back OT...

As a manufacturer, he's got to cater to a market that is steeped in 'magic wood' mythology in order to succeed. He can put out the occasional 'pallet guitar', and admonish his customers to accept something other than pure black ebony, but it's hard to make much more of a real dent than what he's already done (which, it could be argued, has been more than a 'dent'). I know that he has backed several experiments on the effects of top wood parameters on sound, but the hardest perceptions to change are the things that 'everybody knows'.

Sadly, it's darn near impossible to get away from the marketing department, which wants to label every new thing as a 'revolutionary improvement': it makes it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Still, I'm glad he's in there plugging away.

There's an interesting article in the May 28 'Science' about the importance of elephants in the ecology of insects; specifically dung beetles, and the tie-ins with the rest of the system. As the song says: "How Little We Know"...