Later On

I continue to discover new vendors of handmade shaving products. The Malaspina Soap Factory is located In Powell River, BC, and their product line includes some intriguing shaving soaps, one regular and one "cream," in a variety of fragrances. Take a look, especially if you live in Canada.

The Feather Premium is rapidly becoming a favorite. Somehow it tames the Feather blade to bring out all the best points and eliminate the occasional nicking. Plus the razor has a good feel. The handle is slightly longer than common for razors, which adds to heft and balance.

The Sabini brush created a very nice lather from the Paisley shaving soap. Three smooth passes with no problems, a splash of TOBS Mr. Sidney’s aftershave, and I’m good to go.

Interesting combination: US president declares that he can have anyone killed, just on his say-so, and the government moves to make it easier to read your email, monitor your Skype calls, and the like. Charlie Savage reports at the NY Times:

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”

But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.

“We’re talking about lawfully authorized intercepts,” said Valerie E. Caproni, general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “We’re not talking expanding authority. We’re talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security.”

Investigators have been concerned for years that changing communications technology could damage their ability to conduct surveillance. In recent months, officials from the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, the White House and other agencies have been meeting to develop a proposed solution.

There is not yet agreement on important elements, like how to word statutory language defining who counts as a communications service provider, according to several officials familiar with the deliberations.

But they want it to apply broadly, including to companies that operate from servers abroad, like Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry devices. In recent months, that company has come into conflict with the governments of Dubai and India over their inability to conduct surveillance of messages sent via its encrypted service.

In the United States, phone and broadband networks are already required to have interception capabilities, under a 1994 law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. It aimed to ensure that government surveillance abilities would remain intact during the evolution from a copper-wire phone system to digital networks and cellphones…

Continue reading.

I complained about the lack of an "automatic resume" on BD players, and got this reply:

Apparently its a format issue. Any disc with BD-Java encoding will not resume. I like the higher res of bluray but hate pretty much everything else about the format. It is not consumer friendly in the least.

The book references two seminal posts on ShaveMyFace.com on using a boar brush, written by Zach. I just learned that those posts were for some reason deleted, but they are still available at DamnFineShave.com:

Beginner’s guide to boar brushes

The psychology of boar brushes

Worth reading if you use a shaving brush—or think you might.

According to my little email subscription, Jamal was one of Miles Davis’s favorite pianists:

Steve Benen:

The Washington Post ran an item the other day that, at first blush, doesn’t seem especially political, but is worth considering in a larger context.

The issue is the spread of the brown marmorated stink bug through the mid-Atlantic states. They’re harmless to people — the don’t bite, sting, or carry diseases — but for the first time on the continent, they’re doing significant damage to crops, ornamental shrubs, and trees. And as homeowners are discovering, as the bugs begin moving inside as temperatures drop, "when squashed or irritated, the bugs release the distinctive smell of sweaty feet."

The insects reached the U.S. in Allentown, Pa., in 2001, apparently as stowaways in a shipping container from Asia. Now they’re spreading, they have no known natural predators, and there’s "no easy way to kill lots of the bugs at once." Complicating matters, "the invasion is only going to get worse."

So, where’s the political angle?

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a Republican who represents Maryland’s rural 6th District, sent a letter Friday, signed by 15 members of Congress, asking U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson to take immediate action to limit damage caused by Halyomorpha halys.

Of the 15 members who signed the letter, eight of them are Republicans — all from states between West Virginia and New Jersey, and all fairly conservative members of the GOP caucus. The group of lawmakers are looking for "coordinated federal government assistance" from the Obama administration to help farmers and local economies deal with the bugs.

In particular, the 15 lawmakers are eyeing a proposal to reclassify the species under federal guidelines to expand regulatory authority over the bugs.

In other words, faced with a environmental problem, the first instinct from conservative Republican politicians is to ask the federal government to do something. Indeed, they’re specifically asking for federal bureaucrats to sweep into action and use expanded federal regulations to help people.

Hmm.

There seems to be a bit of disconnect here between Republican ideology and real-world problems. On the one hand, conservative lawmakers like Bartlett hate "big government," the EPA, federal regulations, and government bureaucrats. This year, plenty of GOP candidates are talking about eliminating the EPA, firing parts of the federal workforce, scrapping regulations, and slashing spending on various agencies.

Shouldn’t conservative lawmakers, right about now, expect the free market to offer a solution to the stink-bug problem? Why hasn’t the GOP offered everyone a tax credit for fly swatters and facemasks? Why aren’t Tenthers running around demanding to know where, exactly, the Constitution empowers the federal government to deal with an insect infestation?

As it turns out, the EPA, USDA, and scientists at a variety of regional universities (remember, conservatives generally approve of neither scientists nor universities) are working on possible solutions. Hopefully, they’ll be successful.

In the meantime, let this be a reminder to all of us — the federal government can and does play a vital problem-solving role in American public life. Republicans know this, even when they pretend otherwise.

15 minutes on the Nordic Track Ski Machine. My goal this week is to exercise 5 days out of 5. One down.

Today I listened to Musical Offering, Bach’s compositions exploring contrapuntal variations on a theme given to Bach by Frederick the Great.

Yesterday marked an important anniversary. Eliezer Yudkowsky writes:

Today is September 26th, Petrov Day, celebrated to honor the deed of Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov on September 26th, 1983.  Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, take a minute to not destroy the world.

The story begins on September 1st, 1983, when Soviet jet interceptors shot down a Korean Air Lines civilian airliner after the aircraft crossed into Soviet airspace and then, for reasons still unknown, failed to respond to radio hails.  269 passengers and crew died, including US Congressman Lawrence McDonald.  Ronald Reagan called it "barbarism", "inhuman brutality", "a crime against humanity that must never be forgotten".  Note that this was already a very, very poor time for US/USSR relations.  Andropov, the ailing Soviet leader, was half-convinced the US was planning a first strike.  The KGB sent a flash message to its operatives warning them to prepare for possible nuclear war.

On September 26th, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was the officer on duty when the warning system reported a US missile launch.  Petrov kept calm, suspecting a computer error.

Then the system reported another US missile launch.

And another, and another, and another.

What had actually happened, investigators later determined, was sunlight on high-altitude clouds aligning with the satellite view on a US missile base.

In the command post there were beeping signals, flashing lights, and officers screaming at people to remain calm.  According to several accounts I’ve read, there was a large flashing screen from the automated computer system saying simply "START" (presumably in Russian). Afterward, when investigators asked Petrov why he hadn’t written everything down in the logbook, Petrov replied,"Because I had a phone in one hand and the intercom in the other, and I don’t have a third hand."

The policy of the Soviet Union called for launch on warning.  The Soviet Union’s land radar could not detect missiles over the horizon, and waiting for positive identification would limit the response time to minutes.  Petrov’s report would be relayed to his military superiors, who would decide whether to start a nuclear war.

Petrov decided that, all else being equal, he would prefer not to destroy the world.  He sent messages declaring the launch detection a false alarm, based solely on his personal belief that the US did not seem likely to start an attack using only five missiles.

Petrov was first congratulated, then extensively interrogated, then reprimanded for failing to follow procedure.  He resigned in poor health from the military several months later.  According to Wikipedia, he is spending his retirement in relative poverty in the town of Fryazino, on a pension of $200/month.  In 2004, the Association of World Citizens gave Petrov a trophy and $1000.  There is also a movie scheduled for release in 2008, entitled The Red Button and the Man Who Saved the World.

Maybe someday, the names of people who decide not to start nuclear wars will be as well known as the name of Britney Spears.  Looking forward to such a time, when humankind has grown a little wiser, let us celebrate, in this moment, Petrov Day.

From an article linked to earlier, but a point that should be pondered:

As a reminder:  Obama supporters who are dutifully insisting that the President not only has the right to order American citizens killed without due process, but to do so in total secrecy, on the ground that Awlaki is a Terrorist and Traitor, are embracing those accusations without having the slightest idea whether they’re actually true.  All they know is that Obama has issued these accusations, which is good enough for them.  That’s the authoritarian mind, by definition:  if the Leader accuses a fellow citizen of something, then it’s true — no trial or any due process at all is needed and there is no need even for judicial review before the decreed sentence is meted out, even when the sentence is death.

For those reciting the "Awlaki-is-a-traitor" mantra, there’s also the apparently irrelevant matter that Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution (the document which these same Obama supporters pretended to care about during the Bush years) provides that "No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."  Treason is a crime that the Constitution specifically requires be proven with due process in court, not by unilateral presidential decree.  And that’s to say nothing of the fact that the same document — the Constitution — expressly forbids the deprivation of life "without due process of law."  This one sentence from the Post article nicely summarizes the state of Obama’s civil liberties record:

The Obama administration has cited the state-secrets argument in at least three cases since taking office – in defense of Bush-era warrantless wiretapping, surveillance of an Islamic charity, and the torture and rendition of CIA prisoners.

And now, in this case, Obama uses this secrecy and immunity weapon not to shield Bush lawlessness from judicial review, but his own.

Interesting note in NY Times article:

… a new streaming service it began last week in Canada may be a sign of where the company is headed. Netflix is selling a subscription for online streaming only, with no DVDs. That gives Netflix a chance to conquer a second market without conquering another postal system (or building new distribution centers).

John Cole states it well:

I’m at a loss to describe how truly radical, wrong, and evil this is:

At this point, I didn’t believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki’s father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims. That’s not surprising: both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality. But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”: in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

This is a horrifying development, and there simply is no way to excuse it. This smacks of the Stalin or the Ton Ton Macoute- targeting someone for death, and then refusing to offer any evidence why. I’m sure that someone is going to offer some limp legal defense for this behavior, but even if something is technically legal, it can still be evil and wrong. Just a horrible precedent.

From a practical matter, though, how different is it from what we do every single day? Every single day, some unaccountable political apparatchik and team of military advisors signs off on a “secret” drone strike that kills someone, usually a bunch of poor bastards who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time or being born the child of an “alleged terrorist.” And mind you- it is only a “secret” to the American people. The folks on the receiving end are very aware of our “secret” drone strikes. And should someone have the audacity to try to inform the American public of what we are doing, our response is to accuse him of treason and smear him as a rapist.

We’ve lost our way as a nation, and Obama really is trying to be worse than Bush in some areas. I guess when they said they were going to bring back accountability and transparency, they meant in other areas.

I recommend your read the entire column that Cole quotes.

I weighed in at 221.0 lbs this morning, with a BMI of 29.9, below the obesity threshold.

Now to get below 220 lbs (100 kg) and a little further away from the danger point…

First use of my newly replated (in rhodium) Merkur Slant, and my! doesn’t it look pretty!

An excellent lather from the D.R. Harris shave stick, thanks to the Simpson Emperor 3 Super. Then the Slant with a new Schick Platinum Plus blade did three smooth passes. A splash of Marlborough, and I’m ready for the day.

CTE, as you know.

The NY Times today has an op-ed offering college advice, from which I take this:

Somewhere in your childhood is a gaping hole. Fill this hole. Don’t know what classical music is all about? That’s bad. Don’t know who Lady Gaga is? That’s worse.

That seems totally wrong to me. Lady Gaga is a transient phenomenon, and she’ll be lucky to be known in 10 years, much less 20. And I feel confident that 2050 will see little memory or celebration of her.

Classical music, on the other hand, spans centuries of human development and continues to grow, both with new performances of old pieces and with new compositions. Classical music, having be around for a millennium and a half (I’m thinking of Gregorian chants) is likely to endure another hundred years at least.

Moreover, the richness, variety, and depth of classical music compares to Lady Gaga’s musical offerings as, say, Mount Everest compares to an ant’s poop.

Is the writer a total moron? or am I missing something? It certainly seems to me that lacking any acquaintance with or knowledge of classical music is a grievous wound, whereas not knowing who Lady Gaga is amounts to nothing, or close to it.

Fat guys frequently must sew buttons back on, especially if they refuse to acknowledge their size when they pick out their clothes. (You’ve seen them, I’m sure.)

I’m now too small for my former pants (36" waist), and I don’t expect to stay at a 34" waist for long, so I bought an inexpensive pair of khakis from Sierra Trading Post, a site that offers good buys on clothes. My second day wearing them, and the waist button pops off. (I think it was not sewed on particularly securely.)

So I brought out the heavy artillery: Kevlar sewing thread, absolutely unbreakable. (They make bulletproof vests of Kevlar.) It’s great stuff, but you can cut your hands badly if you try to break it by pulling at it: use scissors. That button is now on to stay.

I expect the pants will be a little snug for another week. Then they will last me until I’m ready for a 32" waist.

College is for most a period exceptionally rich in experience and insight, so keeping a journal during your college years makes a lot of sense. Take a look at this guide and see what you think.

It came to mind when I read this column in the NY Times.

I have totally straight hair, so I had no idea of this problem that Tom describes in this post on DamnFineShave.com:

For the last few shaves or so, I’ve noticed a far greater deal of razor bumps and ingrown hairs. My best guess is the humidity hike that came with the end of winter made my hair more curly. Does this happen to anyone else, and how do you guys deal?

Interesting, eh? That post is from April, when we were just heading into humid weather and now of course we’re going the other way in the Northern Hemisphere. But I do have readers in the Southern Hemisphere, and so advice might be directly relevant. My response:

If humidity increases the curl in people’s curly hair, I would think that you’re right: humidity could result in more ingrowns. So on humid days, guys whose hair tends to curl probably should avoid an against-the-grain pass in areas whey they are likely to get ingrowns (e.g., the neck).

A possible experiment: on a humid day, shave (without the ATG pass in areas that tend to have ingrowns) and end the shave, after the final cold-water rinse, by using an alum bar: rub it gently over the wet beard area, let it sit a moment, then rinse. That might tighten things up and reduce ingrowns. (I don’t know that this will work: it’s an experiment.)

I’d be interested in hearing from shavers who have this problem and who have found solutions (complete or partial).