09.15.06
New shaving toys
First, this relatively rare (comes up on eBay once or twice a year) Wilkinson “Sticky” razor arrived about an hour ago. I was able to get it from a fellow forum member, and I will give it a go tomorrow morning. A really beautiful razor, it won several design awards.
Next, a couple of Omega brushes, including the little cutie. Omega Silvertip brushes feel amazingly soft and full and luxurious. That, too, will get a go tomorrow morning.
Hogwarts in matchsticks
Go look. You can build one yourself. At home. In your spare time.
Conical-burr coffeegrinders
I’ve mentioned before that I have a Solis Maestro Plus coffeegrinder, which has conical burrs. A bit more on that:
Whirling blade grinders are not very good at all. But they’re cheap, and that’s what gets people to buy them. Here’s an article on burr grinders. The conical burr grinder grinds slower than a plain (flat) burr grinder so it doesn’t heat the beans so much and produces less static electricity.
I really like the Maestro Plus, and I can also endorse the Bodum Columbia 12-cup French press. I turn the grinder’s timer to just past the vertical, and that produces the right amount of grounds for me. I grind somewhat smaller than regular French press (which requires a coarser grind), and after I pour the water (which I take to 197 degrees) over the grounds, I let it steep for 3 min 30 sec before pushing the plunger/filter down.
Thin lather and the golden age of shaving
I’ve noticed that for some of my brushes—stiffish brushes, like the Shavemac 220—the lather after the first pass is thin and unsatisfactory. I naturally assumed it was the fault of the brush, but I learned today that it was the fault of my technique. With large stiffish brushes, the brush must be “pumped” as the lather is created—judiciously, not so vigorously as to break or damage the bristles. The pumping action, combined with the usual swirling and rapid “whipping” motions, ensures that the lather is worked throughout the brush and, equally important, ensures all the water in the brush is worked into the lather.
A large, stiffish brush, if not pumped, will have a fair amount of water still in the base of the knot, and as you are making your first pass with the razor, this water will flow slowly down and dilute the lather.
With a softer brush, such as the Omega Silvertips, deliberate pumping is not required, since just the usual whipping up of the lather will work it through the brush.
I learned this from a posting on ShaveMyFace.com, and this is why this is the golden age of shaving. When I first started shaving, around 1956-57, the only source of information was commercials and ads, and the general content was, “Buy our product.” Only with the Internet and the Web has it been possible for the far-flung band of shavers to pool their knowledge and the results of their experiments and trials and provide a shaver, new or old, with so much information.
Conflicts within the Army
How do you fight an insurgency? Large-scale battle operations, or individual contacts and investigations? That’s the conflict between Special Forces and regular Army:
With a biker’s bandanna tied under his helmet, the Special Forces team sergeant gunned a Humvee down a desert road in Iraq’s volatile Anbar province. Skirting the restive town of Hit, the team of a dozen soldiers crossed the Euphrates River into an oasis of relative calm: the rural heartland of the powerful Albu Nimr tribe.
Green Berets skilled in working closely with indigenous forces have enlisted one of the largest and most influential tribes in Iraq to launch a regional police force — a rarity in this Sunni insurgent stronghold. Working deals and favors over endless cups of spiced tea, they built up their wasta — or pull — with the ancient tribe, which boasts more than 300,000 members. They then began empowering the tribe to safeguard its territory and help interdict desert routes for insurgents and weapons. The goal, they say, is to spread security outward to envelop urban trouble spots such as Hit.
But the initial progress has been tempered by friction between the team of elite troops and the U.S. Army’s battalion that oversees the region. At one point this year, the battalion’s commander, uncomfortable with his lack of control over a team he saw as dangerously undisciplined, sought to expel it from his turf, officers on both sides acknowledged.
The conflict in the Anbar camp, while extreme, is not an isolated phenomenon in Iraq, U.S. officers say. It highlights two clashing approaches to the war: the heavy focus of many regular U.S. military units on sweeping combat operations; and the more fine-grained, patient work Special Forces teams put into building rapport with local leaders, security forces and the people — work that experts consider vital in a counterinsurgency.
“This war was fought with a conventional mind-set. The conventional units are bogged down in cities doing the same old thing,” said the Special Forces team’s 44-year-old sergeant, who like all the Green Berets interviewed was not allowed to be quoted by name for security reasons. “It’s not about bulldozing Hit, driving through with a tank, with all the kids running away. . . . These insurgencies are defeated by personal relationships.”
The real battles, he said, are unfolding “in a sheik’s house, squatting in the desert eating with my right hand and smoking Turkish cigarettes and trying to influence tribes to rise up against an insurgency.”
Read the whole article. The conventional Army approach—both to the battle and to the method of resolving differing points of view on how to proceed—reminds me of the a conversation between German generals Erich Ludendorff and Max Hoffmann in The Great War (known today as WW I):
- Ludendorff: The English soldiers fight like lions.
- Hoffmann: True. But don’t we know that they are lions led by donkeys?
They’re suspects, remember?
Bush is still fighting for the right to torture terror suspects. Suspects. That might mean, for example, you. Anyone can be a suspect—all that’s needed is for someone in authority to suspect them (or one of their friends/acquaintances, which means that they also then are suspect). That’s why in the US we have so carefully protected the rights of suspects: they are (potentially) us. Bush can’t seem to grasp this. In his view, once someone is suspected, they lose all rights. They can be detained (i.e., imprisoned) indefinitely. They don’t have the right to a lawyer or a court appearance. They can be tortured. All that’s needed is for someone to say, “I suspect him/her.”
Another reason to disrespect the GOP Congress
They still refuse to require container inspection. 100% inspection—all containers scanned—is perfectly feasible and the additional cost would mean about 13 cents more for a T-shirt made in China. But the GOP doesn’t want it—that is, shipping companies don’t want it, and the GOP belongs to and works for large businesses. So we will continue to get inspection of 1 container in 20.
Krugman: Asking the question gives the answer
Paul Krugman has a good column today:
Is the typical American family better off than it was a generation ago? That’s the subject of an intense debate these days, as commentators try to understand the sour mood of the American public.
But it’s the wrong debate. For one thing, there probably isn’t a right answer. Most Americans are better off in some ways, worse off in others, than they were in the early 1970’s. It’s a subjective judgment whether the good outweighs the bad. And as I’ll explain, that ambiguity is actually the real message. Read the rest of this entry »
Unusually pleasant shave this morning
For the first time in a while, I used the green-tube Proraso shaving cream (which, I’m told, is sold at Target, perhaps in the “spa” section). I also used the Proraso pre/post shave. I had forgotten the wonderfully icy feeling of Proraso shaving cream at the rinse. Very bracing.
The brush was the Kent BK8, quite a wonderful brush. And I used the wonderful Merkur Vision razor with a Feather blade. Some have recently come down hard on the Vision, but it remains the best of the razors I have, tied with the Merkur Slant Bar.
Finished up with the alum bar and the Proraso aftershave splash.
What a great way to start the day!
