I’m a little concerned that every blade I’ve tried lately has been quite good. Am I losing my discrimination? Tomorrow I’m going to try American Personnas, reputedly a pretty bad blade, just to see if it’s yet another good blade for me.

The good blades—for me, all better than the Feather, which for me is the best of the Big Five (Merkur, Israeli Personna/Crystal, Derby, Swedish Gillette, Feather—and for me that ranks them from worst to best)—are:

• Astra Superior Platinum
• Treet Blue Special (aka “Black Beauty”)
• Wilkinson Economie
• Astra Keramik Platinum

Those are all very close, but roughly in that order, though in fact I’d say there was a tie between 1 and 2.

These are all from the RazorandBrush largest sampler pack. It also includes Dorcos, which my son-in-law says tore his face up, as well as other Treets, which I need to revisit.

In addition, the Gillette Silver Blue this morning (from the Connaught UK sampler pack) would be right up there with the top 3 above.

I started the novel and realized I had read it before, but (a) it was so good that I wanted to keep reading, and (b) it was a debut novel and I discovered that it’s part of a series featured the hardboiled “Envoy” (which, in the novel, functions as a private eye) Takeshi Kovacs. The debut novel: Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan. I’m just back from the library, clutching the second in the series, Broken Angels. And there are more!

Things have changed:

The Black Sites
A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program.
by Jane Mayer August 13, 2007

In the war on terror, one historian says, the C.I.A. “didn’t just bring back the old psychological techniques—they perfected them.”

In March, Mariane Pearl, the widow of the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, received a phone call from Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General. At the time, Gonzales’s role in the controversial dismissal of eight United States Attorneys had just been exposed, and the story was becoming a scandal in Washington. Gonzales informed Pearl that the Justice Department was about to announce some good news: a terrorist in U.S. custody—Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda leader who was the primary architect of the September 11th attacks—had confessed to killing her husband. (Pearl was abducted and beheaded five and a half years ago in Pakistan, by unidentified Islamic militants.) The Administration planned to release a transcript in which Mohammed boasted, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”

Pearl was taken aback. In 2003, she had received a call from Condoleezza Rice, who was then President Bush’s national-security adviser, informing her of the same news. But Rice’s revelation had been secret. Gonzales’s announcement seemed like a publicity stunt. Pearl asked him if he had proof that Mohammed’s confession was truthful; Gonzales claimed to have corroborating evidence but wouldn’t share it. “It’s not enough for officials to call me and say they believe it,” Pearl said. “You need evidence.” (Gonzales did not respond to requests for comment.)

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From ThinkProgress:

 The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network reports, “Five new lawmakers, including the highest ranking military veteran in Congress, have joined 126 other lawmakers in supporting legislation to repeal the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual service personnel. Representatives Michael A. Arcuri (D-NY), Brian Baird (D-WA), Adam Schiff (D- CA), Joe Sestak (D-PA) and Brad Sherman (D-CA) all became co-sponsors of The Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R. 1246) on Friday, bringing the total number of supporters to 131. Sestak is Congress’s highest-ranking veteran, having served 31 years in the United States Navy and retiring as a 3-star Admiral.”

This is pretty cool. Take a look.

How I hate to see politicians—conservative or liberal—back down from their beliefs just because of fears, especially when those fears have so little foundation. Case in point is the Democrat surrender on the Bush demand for more cover for his wiretapping and citizen surveillance program. They gave in totally. Here’s the Senate vote. My own Senators are among the damned (in my view): Dianne Feinstein, a Lieberman Democrat, voted in favor of the bill, and Barbara Boxer, usually reliable, abstained.

Glenn Greenwald has a good column on this nauseating display of cowardice:

The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt has spent the last several years demanding that Democrats show their Seriousness by capitulating to most Bush “terrorism” policies. He is the type of pundit about which Democratic consultants fret so deeply when they advise their clients not to defy Bush’s will. But even Hiatt sees the Democrats’ weekend capitulation on FISA for exactly what it is, and expresses it clearly in a remarkably good Editorial this morning — entitled “Warrantless Surrender”:

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The Wife laughs at my use of pop-up reminders. We each think the other is crazy in this regard.

Example: in looking at Christmas gifts just now, The Wife sends me a link to SUCH a cute thing! We decide who will get it, and I ask if she thinks I can blog it. (It’s SO cute!) She says it will ruin the surprise, so naturally I create a reminder to blog it on 6 January 2008 (Feast of the Epiphany sounds like a good date, right?) She laughs, inexplicably.

But now I don’t have to think about it, and the reminder will pop up next year. I have reminders for all sorts of things. Some are in ReminderFox, an extremely useful add-on for Firefox. Here, for example, I keep the reminder for the next date that library books are due—and each time I return library books, I update it for the next due-date (which I can readily find in our library’s on-line catalog system). And the monthly reminder to reverse the shower filter. Things like that.

I also use Outlook for reminders of doctor appointments, getting my blood draw a week before seeing the endocrinologist, turning the mattress (every quarter), getting my flu shot (every year), replacing the mattress (every ten years), getting pneumonia shot (every ten years), things like that. This makes perfect sense to me—am I supposed to carry in my head all that stuff. I’d never remember for 10 years.

So one of us is weird. I know which one.

The Eldest uses GreenDimes and says that it really has stopped junk mail at their house. It’s a one-time $15 fee, but: no more junk mail. More, from their marketing letter:

At a team meeting in July, we were thinking through what a ride the first few months has been. To-date, we’ve signed up tens of thousands of households and stopped nearly 1.3 million pounds of junk mail. Your memberships have also helped plant over 270,000 trees and saved more than 3 million gallons of water. We have put together a world-class Board of Directors and recently raised $20.5 million dollars from one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world.  What if we now had the voice, the public support, and the lobbying power to actually put an end to unwanted postal mail for good?

It’s hard to stand for something only if we stand to make money off of the problem-  so if we don’t like junk mail, which we don’t, we’re going to fight to end it.

Our team of 12 has spent the past ten months working around the clock to make sure we reduce as much junk mail for our members as humanly possible.  Press from every corner of America has covered our journey. People are taking note.

Yes, things are going well here at GreenDimes. But we’ve decided to push ourselves even harder and really flip our dimes.

That’s why we’re starting a national Do-Not-Mail Petition.  We want every one of you to sign it and send the URL to your friends.  There’s no cost to you and we will lobby state and federal government to limit unsolicited postal mail immediately. In 2007, 14 states are working on Do Not Mail  legislation, and we are going to work hard to support them and get the other 36 on board.

And there’s more good news. GreenDimes is now a $15 one time charge instead of $36 every year. None of you, our existing members, will be charged again. We also have a $5 refer-a-friend bonus and a store with new products. All of the tools we have built are still yours, but for free, forever.

We’re going to monitor mail preference lists every single month to make sure your name and address are not on them.  And as always, if you have questions or if you feel like you’re continuing to get junk mail, contact customer service and we’ll be happy to help you.  Nothing has changed from a service perspective, it’s just cheaper and easier than ever before.

So there it is- a new site with new ways for you to stand with us against junk mail. We are happy to have your support. Please note that you will be unable to log into your account over the next few days while the engineers are putting the final touches on the site. We appreciate your patience!

Failing not only financially, but (more important) failing at their jobs. Excellent review. I was going to excerpt it, but the whole thing deserves reading. Take a look.

Through a reference in the ShaveMyFace forum, I found The Wok Shop. It has some interesting items: a $20 carbon-steel vegetable knife (called a cleaver because of the shape, but it’s a knife with a knife’s edge),  ironwood chopping blocks, and these inexpensive Chinese knives. Quite a few products there. Worth browsing as we ramp up shopping for Christmas.

Not the impression one gets of Marlboro Man, eh? The Gillette Blue Silver is an excellent blade—smooth shave, no tugging at all, one tiny nick on the chin that I never felt and didn’t even notice until just as I was leaving the bathroom—and My Nik Is Sealed came immediately to the rescue.

All went as planned: Mr. Glo, the D.R. Harris Marlborough shave stick and the Plisson HMW, which worked up the awesome Harris lather. Then the next Executive (a good shaver, it turns out) and the Gillette Silver Blue blade, with Marlborough aftershave afterwards.

Got the coffee, and am clicking through emails.