Later On

On The Shave Den forum, a guy who suffers from ingrown hairs on his neck asks whether traditional wetshaving methods (straight razor or double-edged blade in a safety razor) can help. I thought this response to his question was exceptionally thoughtful and complete. Take a look.

I realized, after recovering, that I was sick this past weekend. I knew at the time that I had practically no energy on Saturday—unable to do Nordic, just got through Pilates. I also felt sort of queasy, so it may have been mild food poisoning from soup that may have gone off. My energy level was quite low, and I also ate too much for dinner (and after) and felt bad about the result.

Sunday I did get through Nordic, but still ate too much: had 3 of those butternut squash rounds instead of 1 as I intended. I just was powerless to resist their pull. I went to bed at 6:30 and slept until 7:00 the next day, just getting up during the night for one 45-minute period. And at lunch I took a very sound nap. I awakened from the nap feeling much better, though.

In fact, I felt surprisingly well. My dinner (salad with some chicken) seemed exceptionally tasty, and I realized that I didn’t feel queasy at all. My mood was much improved as well. When I opened the fridge and saw the remaining butternut squash rounds, I thought to myself not to look at them because the previous night I obsessed about them until I had to eat more.

I filled my iced tea glasses partway with iced tea, then looked for the sparkling water: I was out. I opened the fridge to get more tea, saw the container of butternut squash rounds, and thought again that I mustn’t look at them because I couldn’t resist, but then I realized that I had already forgotten about them. Somehow, though I recognized their appeal, I didn’t obsess about them and finally break down and eat one (or more).

I was journaling this, thinking about how good I felt and how tasty my light dinner was (chicken and salad) and how I didn’t want more—and yet how only the day before I seemed powerless to resist the appeal of the butternut squash rounds.

Because I’ve been listening to Robinson Crusoe, I flashed on the standard situation encountered in older novels: the poor wretch racked by illness whose spirit is brought low and thus fails to resist temptation. I realized that the description applied exactly to me: my spirits were indeed low because I was sick, and the temptation to eat the squash was too strong to resist—but the next day, feeling better, throwing off that temptation was absolutely nothing. The old description, instead of being some sort of moral lesson, was simply a statement of the facts: illness –> low spirits –> unable to resist temptation.

And because my different reactions were just a day apart so that I could clearly recall them, the contrast was particularly noticeable.

I told The Wife about my fascinating discovery, and she said that everyone knew that being sick reduced one’s willpower significantly.

I had no idea. And yes, "willpower" was exactly the word: both my will to exercise and my will to avoid overeating were much weaker, and it indeed seems that illness was the cause.

I’m feeling much better today, and having no trouble at all of following the diet. It was a bit of a struggle to do the Nordic, but I never felt the least bit like throwing it over. I imagine the difficulty is simply that I’m still recovering.

A very pleasant shave today, though very late: I kept postponing my Nordic Track effort, so the shave and shower happened at the end of the morning rather than the beginning.

Still, a very fine shave. Bay rum was the theme, as you see. The Omega 643167 did a great job, as usual, and the lather was thick, rich, and fragrant. Three flawless passes with the Mühle bearing a Swedish Gillette blade, a splash of St. John’s Bay Rum, and I was good to go.

Tough going today, but I held off on the first stop until around 20’30". Then a drink of water and I resumed, only to pause again at 25′. I’m really sweaty now, so will cool off before shower and shave.

The Wife found a clip that’s still operational (for now):

Just back from our Pilates session. The instructor is still finding new muscles to exercise—well, muscles that are rather old in my case, but have had little recent use.

And this morning another 30′ of Nordic, with a brief break at 20′ for a glass of water.

I’ve been needing a little more sleep lately, so I’m giving myself more sleep. I imagine it’s my body trying to get caught up with the exercises. Once muscle develops, I won’t be so tired.

Read this one.

You’ll note that the cube has been modded for fast action: all joints smoothed, lubricated, and the like.

From Dan Colman at Open Culture:

It’s the life of the great French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, in a 10 minute slideshow. The video traces the arc of Rimbaud’s short life (1854–1891), stitching together images from 19th century France, photos taken by Rimbaud himself, and manuscripts scribbled by the poet. In the background, Joan Baez reads lines from Rimbaud’s famous collection,Illuminations, which appears in the Poetry section of our Free Audio Books collection. Project Gutenberg also makes his complete works available in French. Download the free e-text right here.

Hercules famously cleaned the Augean stables. Wikipedia:

The fifth of Labour of Heracles was to clean the Augean stables. This assignment was intended to be both humiliating (rather than impressive, as had the previous labours) and impossible, since the livestock were divinely healthy (immortal) and therefore produced an enormous quantity of dung. These stables had not been cleaned in over 30 years, and over 1,000 cattle lived there. However, Heracles succeeded by rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to wash out the filth.

Augeas was irate because he had promised Heracles one tenth of his cattle if the job was finished in one day. He refused to honour the agreement, and Heracles killed him after completing the tasks. Heracles gave his kingdom to Augeas’ son Phyleus, who had been exiled for supporting Heracles against his father.

According to the Odes of the poet Pindar, Heracles then founded the Olympic Games:

the games which by the ancient tomb of Pelops the mighty Heracles founded, after that he slew Kleatos, Poseidon’s godly son, and slew also Eurytos, that he might wrest from tyrannous Augeas against his will reward for service done.^[7]

The success of this labour was ultimately discounted because the rushing waters had done the work of cleaning the stables and because Heracles was paid. Eurystheus, stating that Heracles still had six Labours to do, then sent Heracles to defeat the Stymphalian Birds.

In our day the task is to somehow clean up after the perpetual lies from the Right—lies that are simply contrary to actual facts, not matters of misinterpretation. In many cases, of course, the lies are simply the result of ignorance and stupidity, but there are deliberate lies with which one must contend as well. Here Dean Baker, an economist, takes up shovel to clean up after Ross Douthat:

Ross Douthat denounced progressives who attacked the Bowles-Simpson proposals for cutting Social Security and Medicare to help finance lower taxes on the hard-pressed wealthy. He got a few things wrong in the process.

First, Douthat complains that businesses in the United States have to "labor under one of the higher corporate tax rates in the developed West." While the marginal tax rate in the United States is somewhat higher than the average, because of the extensive loopholes in the corporate tax, the effective tax rate in the United States is lower than the average for the OECD. There certainly is no general opposition among liberals to reform that would reduce the tax rate while offsetting the lower rates with fewer deductions.

He complains that in the liberal/progressive’s world, "the Social Security retirement age never budges, no matter how high average life expectancy climbs." Mr. Douthat apparently has not heard that the Social Security retirement age is rising already. The age at which workers collect full benefits has already risen from 65 to 66. It will rise to 67 for workers who reach age 62 after 2022. Also, although life expectancy has been rising, this is mostly due to increases for workers in the top half of the income distribution. The increase in the retirement age already in law will eat up most of the increase in life expectancy over the last 40 years for workers in the bottom half of the wage distribution.

He also appears to believe that Social Security is a subsidy for middle class workers. This is not the case. Because of its progressive benefit structure, most middle income workers will get a real return of less than 2.0 percent on the money they paid in payroll taxes.

Douthat also complains about the government warping the health care marketplace. While this is true, the main distortions are not being primarily protected by liberals. Patent protection for prescription drugs cause them to be sold at prices that are several hundred percent above their competitive market price, however conservatives tend to be the biggest proponents of stronger patent protection. Increased international competition would also go far toward bringing our health care costs more in line with the rest of the world.

Douthat also compares the views of liberals in the United States unfavorably with Europe, noting that many European countries are cutting back on the generosity of their welfare states. Apparently Mr. Douthat didn’t know that their welfare states are currently far more generous than the welfare states in the United States. This means that the cutbacks will still in most cases leave the welfare states in these countries considerably more generous than in the United States. For example, the recent hotly contested law in France raised its early retirement age to 62 and its age for full benefits to 67, the levels already in law in the United States. And, French workers have seen a much more rapid increase in life expectancy than workers in the United States over the last four decades.

Finally, Douthat apparently is a Neanderthal protectionist who fears international competition. He argues that the United States could have higher tax rates and a more generous welfare state in the early post-war period because its competitors had been destroyed by the war. Actually, in economic theory, the United States benefits from having wealthy countries from whom it can buy goods and services more cheaply than they can be produced domestically. It is not clear why Douthat thinks that this is a problem.

But the parade of lies and falsehoods from the Right never ceases: they have found a cornucopia of lies.

Thanks to TYD for this interesting article in the NY Times by Justin Gillis:

Sea level is rising in relation to many of the world’s shorelines, and has been for decades. The main reason is that the volume of the ocean is increasing as a result of the melting of land ice and the warming of the sea itself. (Warm water expands, just as warm air does.)

Scientists once thought this volume increase had been going on, in fits and starts, for thousands of years. This widespread belief was often used as a debating point by climate-change skeptics, who argued that sea-level rise was nothing to worry about because it had existed throughout the history of human civilization.

But research in recent years has turned that notion on its head. The matter is not entirely settled, but some persuasive evidence points to the conclusion that the volume of the ocean was fairly stable for the last 2,000 years and began rising only recently, more or less in sync with industrialization. This is important because it suggests that sea level might be pretty sensitive to the greenhouse gases that humans are dumping into the atmosphere.

I made a brief mention of this issue in a long article on Sunday on sea-level rise but did not have the space to go into much detail. Here is some of the background:

Archaeological discoveries that shed light on ancient sea level are prized finds for the experts in this field. One of the most compelling studies of recent years was carried out by an Australian scientist named Kurt Lambeck, who worked with colleagues in Italy. They focused on ancient fish tanks built at the edge of the Mediterranean by the Romans over the 300 years when their civilization was at its height, ending in the second century A.D.

These tanks were sometimes decorative, but mostly they were used as storage pens to keep fish fresh for the lavish banquets that wealthy Romans held in their seaside villas. The tanks, described in some detail by Roman historians, have long fired the imaginations of classicists, since they represent Roman civilization at its decadent height. The tanks made an appearance in the popular Robert Harris novel “Pompeii,” for instance.

The tanks were usually carved into rock at the edge of the shore and constructed in such a way that some of their features bore precise relationships to sea level at the time. For instance, walls and sluice gates had to be built to let water into the tanks while keeping fish from escaping at high tide. A few years ago, Dr. Lambeck, of the Australian National University, and his team realized that these features could be used to arrive at an estimate of sea level in the time of the Romans.

The work demanded careful measurements, and taking account of land movements in relation to the sea. In fact, this is a factor in sea-level studies the world over, one that greatly complicates the interpretation of features like ancient beaches and coral reefs. Land can rise or sink across a large region as a result of numerous factors, including volcanism, so the sea level in a given place and time depends on how those local factors are intersecting with the global change in ocean volume.

Taking all these factors into account, Dr. Lambeck’s team used the Roman fish tanks to reach the conclusion that global ocean volume had not changed much from the Roman era to the 19th century. That means, in essence, that human civilization reached its present size and complexity during a period when shorelines were reasonably stable in much of the world. Perhaps that explains why so many millions of us are living on those shorelines.

But the longer history of the earth shows that sea level is by no means fixed, . . .

Continue reading.

Kevin Drum:

Dani Rodrik notes the surprising news that among the countries that have most improved their human development indicators since 1970, the stars are mostly Muslim countries, including several in North Africa:

What was their secret? Determined policies to expand educational opportunities and access to health along with a willingness to depart from the conventional wisdom of the day and experiment with their own remedies. Even though all three North African countries are Moslem, empowering of women seems to have played an important role as well:

There is now substantial evidence that the health and schooling of children can be raised by empowering women, and this is precisely what Tunisia did when it raised the minimum age for marriage, revoked the colonial ban on imports of contraceptives, instituted the first family planning programme in Africa, legalized abortion, made polygamy illegal, and gave women the right to divorce as well as the right to stand and vote for election.

This comes up repeatedly. As near as I can tell, the single most important thing that developing countries can do to ensure themselves a brighter future is to educate and empower women. I’m not sure there’s even a close second.

Interesting post by Barry Eisler. I have noticed on several occasions that engaging in arguments in forums and through the comment threads is frustrating. The frustration is from a variety of reasons (delayed response times, unclear writing, etc.), including the reason that some seem to have no idea how to argue or what an argument entails. Modeling good argument technique doesn’t seem to help, so Eisler’s taken the bull by the horns. His post begins:

The strangest thing about the low quality of Internet argument is that effective argument isn’t really so difficult. Sure, not everyone can be Clarence Darrow, but anyone who wants to be at least competent at argument can do it. Here are a few guidelines.

I’ll start with a hint: note the qualifier in the preceding paragraph: "anyone who wants to be." I have a feeling most people who suck at argument believe they’re actually good at it. They’re not, and in fact they’re not even arguing — they’re masturbating. Good argument is intended to persuade another. Masturbation is intended to pleasure the self. It’s the people who can’t tell the difference who mistakenly think they’re good at argument. I hope this article will improve the effectiveness of people who are interested in good argument. And I hope it will help people who until now have been masturbating to recognize what they’ve been doing, and to stop doing it in public.

Also, please note that word, "guideline," which is not the same thing as a rule. The points I make in this essay are primarily applicable to comments in blog posts and other one-to-one exchanges. A blog post itself, which isn’t typically addressed to a single person, offers more latitude for, say, the use of ridicule or sarcasm or other techniques that, deployed against an individual, would inhibit that individual from coming around to your point of view. It’s a matter of audience, and of intent. There are plenty of other exceptions, too — but before worrying too much about what they might be, we’d do well to understand the general principles…

Continue reading.

And a well-deserved complaint, too. Morgan Smith reports in the NY Times:

The decision about whether an architect of Bush-era interrogation tactics will keep his license as a psychologist is in the hands of a Texas government agency.

A complaint against Dr. James E. Mitchell is now before the Texas State Board of Psychologists, alleging that he violated the profession’s rules of practice in helping the C.I.A. develop “enhanced interrogation techniques” for use in its so-called black prison sites during the Bush administration’s war on terror. Along with Dr. Bruce Jessen, a fellow military psychologist, Dr. Mitchell was a primary developer of post-Sept. 11 C.I.A. interrogation methods that are currently under a criminal torture investigation by the Department of Justice.

Dr. Mitchell, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article, parlayed his experience in training American soldiers to survive as prisoners of war into a lucrative consulting business with the C.I.A. He orchestrated — and, according to the complaint, participated in — the harsh interrogation of terror suspects using sexual humiliation and the drowning technique called waterboarding.

Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor, and Dicky Grigg, an Austin lawyer, worked with a Texas psychologist, Jim L. H. Cox, to bring the complaint, which documents in lurid detail Dr. Mitchell’s role in the questioning of prisoners.

The complaint, which was brought in June, alleges that the doctor misrepresented his qualifications to the C.I.A., placing “his own career and financial aspirations above the safety of others” while designing a “torture regime” with a “complete lack of scientific basis.”

Mr. Margulies said he was pursuing the possibility of a similar action against Dr. Jessen, who is licensed in Idaho.

Mr. Margulies said Dr. Mitchell had never practiced psychology in Texas although through the years, he had maintained his license here and renewed it.

The severity of the accusations led the American Psychological Association to take the rare step of submitting a public comment to the Texas licensing board. The group’s letter said that if Dr. Mitchell were a member of the professional association — he is not — and if the accusations were true, he would be expelled.

The association’s ethics guidelines prohibit inhumane or abusive treatment of anyone, and there “are no circumstances in which that isn’t the case,” including wartime or threat of terrorism said Rhea Farberman, a spokeswoman.

A spokeswoman for the Texas board said she could not comment on the complaint, saying only that the board had yet to take disciplinary action against Dr. Mitchell, a process that typically takes about six months.

Mr. Margulies emphasized the board members’ importance in the process , calling them the “only gatekeepers” of the profession.

“They are either up to the challenge or not. This is their responsibility,” he said. “There is a psychologist out there who did these things. There’s no credible question about whether they happened. It’s been confirmed over and over again. And so the question is whether it matters.”

Take a look. Here’s just one:

Looks good: some similarities to kettlebell training, but not so intense, I would think.

Take a look at these:

‘The Americans Make Us Do This’: Lessons in TSA Liberty from the ChiComs

On the Kilt Question (TSA Dept – updated)

Body-Searching Children: No for the US Army, Yes for the TSA

National Opt-Out Day

From some of those, this parody (but perhaps soon not to be a parody):

And Reuters has an on-line poll:

They don’t take photos of you naked, they don’t feel your genitals, and they move you through the line. Cathal Kelly reports in TheStar.com:

While North America’s airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification.

That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel’s, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience.

“It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago,” said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He’s worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world.

UPDATE: The Wife found a clip still operational (for now).

“Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don’t take s— from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, ‘We’re not going to do this. You’re going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport.”

That, in a nutshell is “Israelification” – a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.

Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel’s largest hub, Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?

“The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport,” said Sela.

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

“Two benign questions. The questions aren’t important. The way people act when they answer them is,” Sela said.

Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of “distress” — behavioural profiling. Sela rejects the argument that profiling is discriminatory.

“The word ‘profiling’ is a political invention by people who don’t want to do security,” he said. “To us, it doesn’t matter if he’s black, white, young or old. It’s just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I’m doing this?”

Once you’ve parked your car or gotten off your bus, you pass through the second and third security perimeters…

Continue reading. In contrast, here’s how we handle airport security in the US:

UPDATE: I think it was incredibly mean-spirited for the Tribune to block the video, which has been out for weeks. When the video could still be seen, this comment was posted on Andrew Sullivan’s site:

I have three children, one not much older than this girl.  I’m really having a problem with this.

We spend a lot of time, especially as pediatricians, talking with children about how they should be touched.  There are acceptable and unacceptable touches.  More importantly, there are only a small class of adults that a child should be comfortable being touched by at all.

I’m sorry, but a TSA security person does not fall in that group.  Moreover, any parent could tell you that the TSA person in this video has no idea how to deal with a small child.  The way she grabs and child, while the child is struggling, isn’t ok.

I assume that TSA asked the Tribune to take down the video.

Bruce Everiss has announced a new shaving forum, Pogonotomy.

Check it out.

I’m liking the Scottish shaving soap, so today another go at it, this time with the TOBS artificial badger brush, which did a fine job. Artificial badger, so far as efficacy as a shaving brush is concerned, is excellent.

Then I did a three-razor shave, as suggested by Bruce Everiss, picking the ideal razor/blade combination for each pass:

First pass: Hoffritz Slant Bar with Swedish Gillette blade

Second pass: Feather Premium with Feather blade

Third pass: Gillette 1940′s Super Speed (a mild razor) with a Swedish Gillette blade (sharp blade)

This way of shaving is easy if you routinely have a good selection of your razors already out and loaded with blades: you just end one pass, rinse face and razor, put razor on the shelf, apply lather to face, and pick up the razor for the next pass.

For me, it’s a little more trouble since I take a photo of my daily shaving tools. If you don’t take such a photo, it’s well worth trying.