09.02.08
Six razors
I got to thinking about what razors I would pick were I limited to a week’s worth. (I don’t shave on Sunday, as a rule.) Here are the six I came up with, in alphabetic order:
- Edwin Jagger Ivory-handled Chatsworth in gold
- Gillette Aristocrat (1940’s version)
- Gillette NEW
- Merkur Futur
- Merkur Slant Bar in gold
- Merkur Vision 2000
Honorable mentions:
- Gillette English Aristocrat with open comb
- Gillette Fat Boy
- Merkur Progress in gold
That is, if I were to expand the collection, those would be the first added.
Another collection of Firefox add-ons
I actually use a couple of these. Worth a look.
Harold Lloyd
I have a collection of Harold Lloyd films, and I was watching some this weekend. He really was a genius. Safety Last, for example, is a silent film, so the gags are all visual—and they ingenious. Moreover, many have multiple punch lines, as it were: you don’t get just one laugh from a gag, but it continues and changes direction and the same gag situation results in three or four very solid laughs. I’m not going to give examples, because depicting visual humor in words is a mug’s game. Just rent the movie and you’ll see what I mean. You can find it in this volume of the collection.
Back-to-school software
Good post at Lifehacker has an annotated list of software for the savvy student. Check it out.
Another journalist arrest: Amy Goodman
The police seem to be practicing for a police state in the Twin Cities. Amy Goodman is a well-recognized journalist. Here’s the backstory of the arrest.
Carbon nanotubes in a bigger version
Very interesting (and a diagram of their structure at the link):
While trying to grow better, longer nanotubes, researchers accidentally discovered a new type of carbon filament that’s tens of thousands of times thicker. Christened “colossal carbon tubes,” the new structures aren’t quite as strong as nanotubes but are still 30 times stronger than Kevlar per unit weight, and are potentially easier to turn into applications, suggests a new study in an upcoming Physical Review Letters.
Though exceptionally strong, nanotubes are hard to weave into larger fibers. Labs around the world have been trying to grow longer tubes or to string tubes together because long nanotube fibers could lead to futuristic products, such as ultralight bulletproof vests or even cables that could lift cargo into space at a fraction of the cost of a rocket. But researchers have had only partial success.
Recently at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, materials scientist Huisheng Peng and his collaborators were trying to tweak the conditions inside a vacuum oven to grow “forests” of long nanotubes from carbon gas. When Peng opened the vacuum-sealed door, he saw a scene that could be compared to the floor of a barber’s shop: Thin, black hairs were scattered everywhere.
Carbon nanotubes are not visible to the naked eye. “At first, I thought they were a lot of carbon nanotubes bonded together,” says Peng, who recently moved to Los Alamos from Fudan University in Shanghai, China.
Lab tests, however, revealed that the filaments, which can be centimeters long and as thick as one-tenth of a millimeter, were not clumps of nanotubes, but a new and unusual …
Meeting with the press and taking questions
I wonder whether McCain (totally avoiding the press these days—and see his earlier interview with TIME, in which he tried to avoid the press even while being interviewed) and Palin will ever meet with the press and take questions at an open-ended press conference? Certainly the press (and the citizenry) have many questions to ask. Latest word I’ve seen is that Palin will not meet with the press during the convention.
Global warming: predicting climate, not weather
I didn’t realize that some confuse climate prediction with weather prediction until someone’s commet made it clear that it’s worth a note to explain the difference: climatologists study the history and causes of climate, whereas meterologists focus on the weather. Global warming is a climate prediction, and our inability to predict the weather a few weeks from now is irrelevant.
Think of the tide: we can accurately predict the tide, but we can’t accurately predict individual waves.
BTW, a thought occurred to me: we have tended to treat “sea level” as a constant—e.g., the little inset placque on the Denver Capitol steps that marks exactly one mile above sea level. All those measurements will change once the sea level changes. Probably we should use something more stable—e.g., distance from the center of the earth or some such.
Trafalgar and Sandalwood
Truefitt & Hill Trafalgar shaving cream this morning, and the Rooney Style 2 brush. Very good lather, and then a good shave with a Gillette Rocket, the English version of the Super Speed, carrying a Nacet blade of some uses. Taylor of Old Bond Street Sandalwood aftershave, and I’m good to go.
