11.11.06
My new and only Plisson brush
The Wife went to Paris with a request: to see if she could find a good Plisson brush. I did casually mention “High Mountain White.”
So while there, she looked for someplace that sold them, and found they were sold in a little shop on the other side of the city: the shop of Alain, Maître Barbier Coiffeur. She trekked there, in the last block having to walk along a narrow passageway in a torn-up street. She arrived at a small, unprepossessing shop that did indeed show some shaving brushes. It was the shop of Alain, the last Master Barber in France. The young man with poor posture who was smoking a cigarette turned out not to be Alain, for as soon as she mentioned the shaving brush, he vanished into the rear of the shop and an impish-looking man, somewhat along the lines of Charles Aznavour, emerged.
He was delighted when he heard that she wanted to buy a shaving brush for her husband. A fine gift, he said, beaming. Then he started questioning her about my beard: Was it heavy? How often did I shave? When she rubbed my cheek and I hadn’t shaved, what did it feel like? and so on.
Finally, he offered three brushes for her consideration. The only difference, he explained, was the handle: one of mock tortoise, one of wood, and one (pictured) of metal. She made the same choice I would have made, but she tentatively asked about High Mountain White.
He shook his head gravely. Those, he said, do not last. People like them because they’re pretty—but they do not last. But this, he said, tapping the brush, is what he, Alain, the last Master Barber in France, would recommend. And it was he who wrote Plisson’s brochure (shown in photo).
She bought it and trekked back across town, and with eyes newly aware of shaving brushes spotted a store just down the street from her hotel. It was filled with shaving brushes, including some labeled as Plisson High Mountain White. But those do not last, and besides, she had brought me a brush from the last Master Barber of France.
Tomorrow I shall use it.
Nelly and her new kitty tree
Here’s Nelly checking out her new kitty tree. She’s still a little tentative about it, but a nap or two should make it okay. These were taken with camera phone, but you can see that she’s a cute kitty and the tree is a good one with a small footprint.
UPDATE: Now Nelly has gone into the tunnel on the tree. You can tell she’s excited: her tail is whipping back and forth so fast it’s blurred.
Problems with the Patriot Act, TSA, etc.
One of the problems in setting up a large bureaucracy in which various minions are given discretionary powers of arrest, torture, and the like is that a given minion may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Some, in fact, have parts on order in that they are attracted to positions of authority and power to compensate for negative feelings about themselves and about others. For example, this story, via Boing Boing:
I was departing a small commuter airport in Southern California last week and I found myself in jail! Here’s the story with the facts, and without any “emotional hype.”
About two years ago I made a big, rubber band ball. It’s bigger than a softball, but not as big as a basketball. It’s made of 100% rubber bands, and the core is nothing but knotted rubber bands. It’s been in the trunk of a car that I own and keep down there for most of that time.
I decided to bring it home to Anchorage to work on more, and that proved to be a bad decision. I threw it in my carry-on and headed off to the airport. When I got there, I “dinged” at the metal detector while wearing a belt that has never alarmed before. I removed the belt and went through a second time, and “passed.” As I got through I noticed that my carry-on bag was open and being rummaged through. The TSA agent held up my rubber band ball and asked, “what’s this?” I replied, “it’s my rubber band ball. What are you doing looking through my bag?” The Sheriff that was standing there said, “you gave implied consent to search your bag by coming through the checkpoint.” I retorted, “you need to ask me first though, and I object to your digging through it out here. If you want to look in there, we need to do it in private.”
So the LEO grabbed my bag and he, myself, the TSA “boss,” and a TSA agent went behind a curtain. They dug through my stuff and took the rubber band ball away for further screening. They came back with the rubber band ball and told the “TSA boss” that it was positive for flammable residue and that it had something metal at the core. He started up at me accusing me of wrongdoing and saying things about it being a “precursor” or a “trigger.” I told him to “quit running at the mouth” and that it was “nothing of the sort.” I explained that it had been in the trunk of my car for a long time and probably picked up a bit of oil or gas or something from that. I also told him that there was nothing at the core and that it was 100% rubber bands.
Read the rest of this entry »
Jack Williamson, 1908-2006
Jack Williamson published his first science-fiction story in 1920 and his last novel, The Stonehenge Gate, last year.
In 1954 I was 14 and spent the summer working on my uncle Choc’s farm near Loco, OK. He was in the US Army Reserves, and on Mondays he attended a meeting in Ardmore. We would drive in fairly early, and he would give me $1 and drop me off at the Ardmore Public Library—I can still recall the wonderfully musty smell of books—where I would return the books checked out the previous week and spend an hour finding books for the coming week. Then I’d go have a hamburger, see a movie, and go to the drugstore next to where the Reserves met and have a sundae and read until he was out of his meeting.
This is relevant because one of the books I read that summer was Jack Williamson’s Seetee Ship (1950), which totally blew me away. It was my first encounter with the idea of antimatter, called “contra-terrane” (C-T) in the novel.
So I eagerly sought out his other books, and found The Humanoids (1947—and still in print). I read that and found it disturbing—so disturbing, in fact, that I later wrote him about it, and got a very nice letter in reply.
He was one of the masters of science fiction, and he enjoyed a long and happy life. Very satisfying. His AP obit:
PORTALES, N.M. Author Jack Williamson is being remembered as grand master of science fiction for his dozens of novels and short stories. He died today at his Portales home at the age of 98.
Williamson published steadily since writing his first story — “The Metal Man” — in 1928 at the age of 20.
In addition to teaching a course at Eastern New Mexico University, he continued to write until close to his death.
His last book, “The Stonehenge Gate,” was published recently.
Williamson’s granddaughter, Betty Williamson, says her grandfather would often say—quote—”I have lived a wonderful life and I will die with no regrets.”
Memorial services were pending.
James Carville’s perceptive insights
James Carville recently has suggested that the Democrats remove Howard Dean from his office as head of the DNC and give the position to Harold Ford. Without Dean, Carville says, the Democrats could have raised much more money and won more races. ??? I believe that under Howard Dean, the Democrats have raised a record amount of money, and moreover Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy proved itself when the GOP unexpectedly imploded and (for the first time) the Democrats had at least some organization nationwide to take advantage of that.
But Carville is always good for some sort of insight. For example:
Anyway, I think this is a good time to return to this gem from Carville, discussing vice-presidential options in 2000:
By choosing former Georgia governor Zell Miller as his running mate, Al Gore could add intellectual brainpower, rhetorical firepower, and lots of plain old populist piss-and-vinegar to this staid election. [...]
Zell Miller is also a world-class campaigner and orator. His keynote address to the 1992 Democratic convention ranks with Barbara Jordan’s and Mario Cuomo’s as one of the finest examples of powerful rhetoric and partisan passion.
At a time when politics seems moribund, Zell would bring energy. When people are looking for heroes, Zell’s the real thing. And when Democrats need someone who’s not afraid to open up a can of whupass on the radical right [on behalf, I think you mean--ed.], they need look no further than Zell Miller.
Yeah, that would have been great. Can someone remind me why I’m supposed to care about James Carville’s views of Democratic strategy in 2006 again?
UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has a good relevant comment.
New shaving cream
Emily of Em’s Place sent me a sample of a very nice lathering shaving cream (scroll down), and this morning I gave it a go. She sent Bay Rum, though it’s available in a variety of fragrances and also unscented. The Bay Rum had a wonderful fragrance, and with the Vision and a Feather blade I had a wonderful shave. Of course, I carried through with the theme and used Pinaud’s Bay Rum aftershave. 
Robert Graves, 1895-1985
Robert Graves is worth remembering today, Armistice Day once, Veterans Day now, because of his service in the Great War and the memoir he wrote afterwards, Goodbye to All That. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend that you do.
One of my favorite anecdotes: After his service in the war, Graves attended Oxford University, where he became friends with Col. T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”). Graves tells this story:
Professor Edgeworth, of All Souls’, avoided conversational English, persistently using words and phrases that one expects to meet only in books. One evening, Lawrence returned from a visit to London, and Edgeworth met him at the gate. ‘Was it very caliginous in the metropolis?’
‘Somewhat caliginous, but not altogether inspissated,’ Lawrence replied gravely.
Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order
Christopher Alexander wrote a series of impressive and influential books. Probably the two mentioned most often are A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building. These books not only influenced architecture—their ostensible subject—but also computer programming, specifically in the area of object-oriented languages, the objects being the Alexandrian patterns.
Now his magnum opus, The Nature of Order, has been published. Here’s a brief discussion, including an outline.
One book of particular interest—now out of print—is his book on Turkish carpets. I have a copy, as does The Wife, and it’s quite fascinating. Here’s why:
The rules for putting matter together to form a building are universal, and apply to all man-made objects. In particular, they apply to two-dimensional designs such as paintings and textile patterns. The simplification of having only two dimensions and a single material (knots of wool) makes carpets an interesting application of the rules for organized complexity. Alexander establishes the connection between architectural design and Oriental Carpets in his fascinating book: A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Unfortunately, the demand for the book has driven the price up. I got my copy from Abebooks.com for $85, but I see that (today) the least expensive one is $540, though Amazon has a copy listed for $329. If you can find a copy in a used bookstore at a good price, buy it. Otherwise, your best bet for reading the book is a good library.
I have a friend whose house was designed using some of the principles set forth by Alexander. For example, one important idea is to go to the site and look at it and its surroundings, and situate the structure to take advantage of the site. Her architect built a wall framed with wood and covered with cardboard, with the windows cut out, that was the size and shape of the main living area wall. He and an assistant held the wall in place as my friend looked through the window, standing and seated, in the center of what would be the living room. They moved the wall this way and that, trying various angles, until the mountains in the distrance were framed in the window to my friend’s satisfaction. And that defined the location that wall and its windows, and thus the living room and main house.
Dark matter is still needed
I have linked to this post previously, which suggests that general relativity explains the rotation of the galaxies, with no need for hypothesized dark matter. But that paper has serious problems, so one can safely ignore it. So we’re left with dark matter—or with even stranger ideas.
Iron for babies
Insufficient iron in the diet (like too much iron in the diet) is bad for anyone, but has a serious impact on development for babies. (References at the link.)
Babies who aren’t getting enough iron in their diet do worse on mental-ability tests than babies whose iron needs are being met. In the latest study to confirm that threat to children, researchers find that mental deficits from iron deficiency worsen even into the teen years for children in families of low socioeconomic status.
Betsy Lozoff, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has been studying this issue for decades. Her new study followed a group of 185 children in an urban community near San Jose, Costa Rica, up to the age of 19.
Lozoff and her colleagues began working with this group in the mid-1980s. The team had invited parents of healthy 1-to-2-year-old babies in the community to have their children participate. The researchers tested the babies’ blood for iron and separated them into groups with chronic iron deficiency or good iron status. In cases of severe lack of iron, or iron deficiency anemia, the researchers treated the babies with supplements of the mineral for 3 months.
Lozoff and her colleagues tested the children’s mental skills as infants and at ages 5, 11 to 14, 15 to 18, and 19 years. The researchers assessed babies by testing such things as whether they could recognize words and imitate an action. Assessments of older children centered on math, reading, and writing.
The researchers determined whether the children came from middle or low socioeconomic backgrounds by considering the educational and occupational status of parents. Read the rest of this entry »
Time to increase your vitamin D intake
As I posted earlier, people need vitamin D supplements in the winter months unless they live close to the tropics and stay outside in the sun with skin exposed. The current minimum daily allowance recommendation of 400 IU is clearly too low, even for a minimum, for us living in the high latitudes and spending much of our day indoors. Here’s another article (references at the link):
In April 2005, a virulent strain of influenza hit a maximum-security forensic psychiatric hospital for men that’s midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. John J. Cannell, a psychiatrist there, observed with increasing curiosity as one infected ward after another was quarantined to limit the outbreak. Although 10 percent of the facility’s 1,200 patients ultimately developed the flu’s fever and debilitating muscle aches, none did in the ward that he supervised.
“First, the ward below mine was quarantined, then the wards on my right, left, and across the hall,” Cannell recalls. However, although the 32 men on his ward at Atascadero (Calif.) State Hospital had mingled with patients from infected wards before their quarantine, none developed the illness.
Cannell’s ward was the only heavily exposed ward left unaffected. Was it by mere chance, Cannell wondered, that his patients dodged the sickness? Read the rest of this entry »
