Later On

As we near our 50th reunion, there’s a certain amount of retrospection about our college years and their impact. The Son points to a short note in the current issue of the New Yorker from a St. John’s alumnus, who writes of his own discovery of the program and how it affected him.

His focus is on his reading, and perhaps—broadly defined—that is the focus of the program. But I see it somewhat differently. We were asked to write a brief note about our own encounter with the program, and shortly before I read the piece in the New Yorker, I had written the following:

When I was a student at St. John’s, the program changed me in ways that I began to understand better when I became, for a time, director of admissions and had to explain the program—its goals, means, and methods—to prospective students. (I learned from that, and now I regularly try to explain the things I am working to understand: as we learned at St. John’s, good questions lead to greater understanding, and interactive explanation is a rich source of good questions.)

We gain skills through their exercise. In the St. John’s program we exercised the skills of reading, study, questioning, listening, speaking, teaching (demonstrating math theorems, for example), translating, writing, and performing experiments. Through active exercise we acquired, practiced, and improved our skills in the liberal arts.

The works we studied required those skills—indeed, they required more skill than we had, but that was what drove the learning: our skills improved the harder they were worked, and those books demand much from us, then and now. And it is that demand that makes them so enormously rewarding.

Those demands would have been overwhelming without the guidance we got from our tutors and the help of our fellow students. Sometimes someone would help us by explaining something to us, sometimes the help would be in listening to (and questioning) our own explanations.

We were immersed in a sea of learning and change, and in that time we formed a foundation for our later life and learning.

Today I have one of those remarkable shaves, the kind that leads one to casually stroke his cheeks and chin to feel again the phenomenal smoothness. The causes are never clear, but it does cause a certain impatience to get to the next shave to try again…

The Vie-Long Gonzalo “professional” boar/horsehair combo brush is a terrific tool: resilient, with excellent loft, it quickly whipped up a fine lather from the Roger & Gallet shaving soap—a soap I wasn’t using because it seemed just so-so, but this method produced a very nice lather indeed: if not Creamy Lather, close to it. And the Marvy mug is (IMO) extremely nice: tough, capacious, and well-suited to the task. As noted yesterday, the hard rubber easily absorbs without damage the blows it receives from the Gonzalo’s brass ring and I did my vigorous, rapid brushing.

Three very nice passes with the iKon OSS—switching back and forth between sides lets each side work on every pass, and the result today is spectacular. This is the third shave on the Shark Chrome blade, and it’s doing fine.

After the third pass, I was reluctant to end the shave, but there was nothing left to do, and I didn’t feel like getting into full-body shaving. So a final rinse, a splash of Calvin Klein’s Obsession, and I’m read for the week.

The Marvy mug is new to me. I picked up one from a fellow forum member on Pogonotomy.com and took it for a trial run yesterday. It’s capacious and deep, ideal for the Creamy Lather process. As an added benefit, it’s unbreakable, being made of hard rubber, an appropriate material when working over the hard surfaces typical of a bathroom, and even more a benefit if you use a brush like the one in yesterday’s shave: the Vie-Long Gonzalo 04102 brush, which has a brass ring around the handle just below the knot. When you are brushing vigorously to work up the lather, that ring tends to hit the mug, and with a porcelain mug like the one I used yesterday, the sound is ominous. By working the brush carefully, I could mostly avoid strikiing the sides, but the Marvy mug removes the need for care. As a result, I could brush more vigorously and freely.

It’s well designed specifically for use as a shaving mug: the grooves in the bottom hold the soap puck securely, and the depth and steep sides makes it easy to work the developing lather into the brush. I like it.

It’s also available in other colors in plastic.

Indian families greatly prefer sons to daughters, and now that they can determine the sex of the foetus at a very early age, females are frequently aborted simply because they are female rather than male. This strikes me as reprehensible and inappropriate, and also likely to lead to serious problems down the line. As anyone who has read William H. McNeill’s fascinating book The Pursuitof Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since A.D. 1000 knows, a society is in for a bad patch when the number of underemployed young males rises. And when the burgeoning population of males cannot find females, things can get very ugly indeed. Britain solved the problem by shipping young men off to the various colonies. France under Napoleon solved it by shipping the young men (as armies) off to foreign countries to find their support there: seizing it through warfare. What will India do?

Fascinating review of what sounds like an interesting book. They wrote alternate chapters and were not allowed to change what the other had written…

Why Libya is such a hotspot: Gaddafi wanted to charge more for Libyan oil than oil companies wanted to pay. Read this column for many interesting links and good documentation.

I think it was Ed Brayton who first pointed out this study. The abstract:

Advances in understanding the effects of early education have benefited public policy and developmental science. Although preschool has demonstrated positive effects on life-course outcomes, limitations in knowledge on program scale, subgroup differences, and dosage levels have hindered progress. We report the effects of the Child-Parent Center Education Program on indicators of well-being up to 25 years later for more than 1400 participants. This established, publicly funded intervention begins in preschool and provides up to 6 years of service in inner-city Chicago schools. Relative to the comparison group receiving the usual services, program participation was independently linked to higher educational attainment, income, socioeconomic status (SES), and health insurance coverage, as well as lower rates of justice-system involvement and substance abuse. Evidence of enduring effects was strongest for preschool, especially for males and children of high school dropouts. The positive influence of 4 years or more of service was limited primarily to education and SES. Dosage within program components was mostly unrelated to outcomes. Findings demonstrate support for the enduring effects of sustained school-based early education to the end of the third decade of life.

The Wife and I went to Carmel for lunch, then drove around the hilly part of Monterey just to see what’s there. We’ve not been in that part of the city at all, despite living here for years, so we just drove around and looked. It’s a residential area, interspersed with forest. You’d drive through a bunch of trees in a wood, then find houses among the trees, then move on to a part of the hillside with no trees at all, just houses, looking somehow sort of bald. Then back among trees.

After about 30-40 minutes of that, driving around looking at parts of Monterey we’d never seen, and observing how the landscape varied, we returned home, and as we drove back into the part we new, it all looked strange—not enough trees, for one thing. I realized I was looking at it in the same way I looked at the subdivisions new to me, and in looking at it that way, I started seeing it anew once more. Interesting phenomenon to experience.

A Touch of Frost is a mystery series on Netflix Watch Instantly, based upon the British police procedurals by R.D. Wingfield. I’m enjoying them greatly, and I believe I have finally tuned in to how these series work.

Specifically, I now understand to follow along with the slow-developing background story of the permanent characters as a separate thread from the current episode’s mystery. As The Wife told me long ago, the background information on the permanent character that gradually builds up adds depth and resonance to minor details in the episode being viewed.

A few gimmicks I’ve noticed and enjoy: Frost’s habit of ending an interview by taking his leave, going to the door, then pausing, turning around, and saying, “Just one more thing…” The Wife tells me that Columbo used the same gimmick. Another is the semi-adversarial relationship Frost has with his rule-obsessed boss. The boss comes across as a complex character, and I’ve now seen how they do it: the boss will say or do something sensible or touching—that’s the gift, so you like him for it—and then be a jerk about it—that’s the take-back, so you continue to keep your distance. This on-again, off-again character makes him somewhat unpredictable and more interesting.

At any rate, it’s a fun way to spend an evening.

Totally wonderful shave today. The Vie-Long Gonzalo 04102 brush—a combination of boar and white horsehair—has bloomed somewhat after my first practice use of the brush. In person, it’s lighter in color: sort of a cream color. The boar/horsehair combination is just perfect: it works better than boar, and has more body and resilience than horsehair alone. (Readers across the pond can find the brush at Gifts and Care, for example.)

I used the Klar Kabinette soap, a chunk of which I cut and crammed into the bottom of the apothecary bowl. This is a very good shape for making Creamy Lather: deep, the handle offers a firm grip, and the shape of the bowl lets you force the soap puck in so that it doesn’t move under the kind of vigorous brushing needed for Creamy Lather—unlike, say, the sort of hemispherical bowl (like a cereal bowl) that works well when used purely as a lathering bowl (without a soap puck in it: load the brush with soap, then work up the lather in the bowl—and I’ll certainly be trying that technique as I continue my experiments).

I did get a Creamy Lather, and this brush is going to break in quickly. It has excellent capacity—no need for a return trip to the soap bowl—and it feels good already. I think this may become a favorite brush as it breaks in.

Fine lather, and this morning I used the OSS (with the Shark blade from yesterday’s shave, which worked fine today as well) just like a regular razor, flipping to the other side when the first filled with lather. It worked great, and I, as a person who like variety, really enjoyed the slight differences between the two sides. Both are extremely comfortable—an iKon secret of some sort—and both have (for me) just the right amount of assertiveness: neither scary nor wimpy, just an excellent workmanlike approach to stubble removal.

No sign of nick or burn, but an extremely smooth result after three passes. Now that I’m simply using it as a regular razor, without trying to pay attention to which side I’m using, I like it even more. But now I want to try comparing the open-comb to my other iKon open-comb and the straight-bar to the other straight-bar.

Greg mentioned that it is extremely difficult to fine-tune the head to get the right shaving feel and performance, but I think he’s done it again with this one. This is a terrific razor, IMO. And this is just the prototype. I can’t wait to see the final product…

One reason that Bush was so determined to try suspected terrorists before military commissions is that—to put it simply—it’s much easier to procure “guilty” convictions for innocent defendant: the rules are looser and the defendant has fewer rights than in a civilian court.

And if you are innocent and get convicted, and have a very solid basis for appeal, you can spend nine years in the brig before the appeals court gets around to acting on the appeal. Michael Doyle of McClatchy explains:

Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Brian W. Foster served nearly a decade in Leavenworth for a crime he didn’t commit.

Foster is now free and serving his country once more. The military appeals system that failed him, meanwhile, is still trying to right itself.

“It’s a terrible system,” Foster said. “The judges and attorneys who had the opportunity to stand up and say ‘this isn’t right,’ they didn’t do that.”

The court that finally freed Foster in 2009 called him a victim of “judicial negligence” and “intolerable” errors. The nine-year delay between conviction and appeal was “unacceptable,” the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals acknowledged. . .

Continue reading.

My prediction: There will be zero accountability for this. As seems to be true in today’s military, no officer will be subject to any sanctions or punishment. One or two enlisted personnel might possibly get punished, but those responsible (i.e., officers) will suffer not at all.

Dean Baker carefully makes the case that we are header for another Great Depression if we do not change course—something that Washington (Congress and the Obama Administration) cannot seem to do.

The problem, of course, is that the person being refuted is psychologically incapable of following the argument. Still, it’s sort of interesting to see, in a train-wreck sort of way. Here it is.

I had to go again with La Toja soap and aftershave: the soap is quite good and I love using that bowl, and the aftershave deserved a second hit. I used a new Vie-Long horsehair brush—again, the not-unpleasant horsey smell from the wet brush. I got a good lather, but not quite the full-out Creamy Lather, probably because (a) my skill is still shaky; (b) the brush is brand new and might require a little break-in; and (c) the lathering space in the La Toja bowl is somewhat limited (though I doubt that this is a significant factor).

But note the razor: this is (so far as I know) the unveiling of the new iKon OSS asymmetric razor: one side an open-comb, the other a straight bar. Some shavers have found that, given that different razors have different shaving characteristics, a razor that does an aggressively efficient job at first-pass stubble reduction might not be your first choice for the third-pass against-the-grain polishing. Thus some use two or three razors in the course of a shave—easily done if the razors in current use are already loaded with a blade and ready to go: you just rinse the razor after a pass, as you normally do, then put it down and pick up the razor you like for the next pass.

What Gregory Kahn has done has made the two sides of the head suitable for two stages of the shave: the open-comb side for first-pass stubble removal, the straight-bar side for polishing.

On this first shave, I used the open-comb for the first WTG pass and the straight bar for XTG and ATG. As with the other iKon razors I have, the shave is noticeably comfortable. I was worried that the straight-bar side might be excessively mild (like a Gillette Tech, say, or a Weishi), but in fact it is comfortably assertive: no need for any special caution, but it is quite efficient—possibly because it was designed for the task (i.e., the task of polishing once the stubble has been reduced by the first pass).

Both sides seemed quite good, but now I want to shave more so I can compare—for example, I’d like to try the straight-bar side as the first-pass stubble whacker just to see how it performs. And I want to try the open-comb side in a side-by-side (as it were) comparison with the iKon Bulldog open comb.

All in all: an innovative, efficient, comfortable new razor. Here’s another shot of the head, from the top. This is an engineering prototype, so the finish is probably not what will be on the final production version:

As readers with sharp eyes will note, I used a Shark Chrome blade (at a commenter’s suggestion). It seems like a fine blade for me, though of course YMMV. But the Shark is welcome to a place in my rotation.

I needed MS Word on the Mac so that I could work on the books in my chair. Open Office is a great bargain, but the word-processor is not so good as MS Word.

I ended up buying the complete academic package—Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Messenger, Microsoft Document Connection, and Connector (the last two I haven’t figured out).

I find that I really do like Word and Messenger. I also got Outlook as part of the academic package, and truly it is much better for me than the various Apple programs that it replaces: the calendar, mail, and address book apps. Maybe Apple also has task and note apps, but I never found them and now I can use Outlook for that.

I’m a happy guy.

Sheets with pockets—and they look useful.

I’m referring to the Administration’s vengeful attitude toward whistleblowers who embarrass government officials by revealing incompetence, waste, illegal activity, and the like. Obama seems determined to stomp out such activity (despite his constant promise to the contrary while he was campaigning). And the reason, of course, to silence government critics is that the government wants to do much more along the lines of the activities being criticized.

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent column on the activities of the various grand-jury investigations launched by the Obama Administration. It’s really worth reading. Let me just give here the update to the column (but be sure to read the column):

The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer echoesThe Washington Post report linked above in reporting that the Obama DOJ’s espionage prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake is “crumbling.” Mayer writes that “the government has been scrambling to find a way to avoid the trial now scheduled for next Monday” and that — after indicting him on 10 felony counts, including espionage — “the government has offered Drake the possibility of pleading to a misdemeanor, with no jail time,” an offer he refuses to accept if it means admitting wrongdoing.  But the benefit of prosecuting whistleblowers endures even if the case crumbles because (as is true for the criminal investigation of WikiLeaks) it is legally frivolous: namely, it still serves as a thuggish deterrent to future would-be whistleblowers thinking about exposing government corruption, deceit and illegality.

UPDATE: Some readers don’t much care for Greenwald, so I excerpt a paragraph from this current column and ask you to reflect on it:

. . . The attempt to criminalize WikiLeaks is clearly a leading prong in the Obama administration’s truly odious and dangerous war on whistleblowers.  Just today, The Washington Post reports that the Obama DOJ’s espionage prosecution against Thomas Drake — who exposed substantial waste, corruption and illegality at the NSA — is falling apart.  The Nation today examines how diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show that the U.S. worked cooperatively with large American corporations (Fruit of the Loom, Haines, Levi’s) to block attempts by the Haitian Parliament to raise the meager minimum wage to $5/day for Haitian workers who labor in factories producing t-shirts and underwear (in the portions of his purported chat log selectively released by Wired, Bradley Manning said that part of his motive was that the diplomatic cables show “how the first world exploits the third”).  It is because of revelations like those that the Government is so desperate to punish and deter future disclosures. . .

I think James Fallows hit the nail on the head in pointing out that devoting one’s career to supporting someone else, helping them succeed, comes from an implicit bargain in which the leader, in return for the support, pledges (in effect) to merit the support: to carry through on promises, to work to achieve the goals of the group, and to be responsible and honest in carrying out his or her side of the bargain.

Now some of those supporters are weighing in. Worth the click.

UPDATE: The reportage on this incident is quite misleading. See corrections in the comments. – LG

Megan Scudellari reports in The Scientist:

A University of Wisconsin–Madison postdoc was forced to resign after alleging that his advisor engaged in scientific misconduct, according toNature. In 2009, zoology postdoc Aaron Taylor voiced doubts about zebrafish images published inDevelopment by his faculty advisor, developmental biologist Yevgenya Grinblat. Taylor was a co-author on the 2009 paper. Later, he accused Grinblat of pressuring him to publish data that he considered unreliable and subsequently aired his concerns with the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research Integrity.

In November 2009, the school’s zoology department chairman, Jeffrey Hardin, told Taylor he could resign, be fired, or drop the misconduct “issues,” according to a conversation Taylor recorded and shared withNature. Taylor resigned and has begun work at a new institution. Reprisal against whistle-blowers is banned by the US federal policy on research misconduct. Hardin maintains that Taylor was not retaliated against for blowing the whistle on his advisor, but was let go because of “serious personnel issues.” Grinblat is not being investigated by the university or the ORI.

That sounds quite off to me: Why no investigation of Grinblat? Reflexive protection of members of the in-group against accusations from those outside?

We truly are moving toward a police state, in which police in many localities can do whatever they please with no accountability. And, while they are at it, they are illegally quashing all efforts to document their illegal and inappropriate and destructive behavior.

In this post, Brayton describes an event in Miami. From the post:

In Miami Beach the police surrounded a car and opened fire on the occupants, hitting four innocent bystanders in the process.. A man in a nearby car recorded it on his cell phone, prompting the police to point their guns at him, demand the cell phone and stomp on it. Then they detained him, took him to the police station and interviewed him.

Turns out that he had pulled the SIM card from the phone and hid it, so they failed in their attempts to destroy the evidence.

The post includes the cellphone video, which is clear and vivid.

Just a few days ago Ed blogged another police encounter with a camera, again with illegal behavior and outright lies—caught, as it turns out, on camera. And as Ed points out, the officers in question will suffer no sanctions at all. It’s as though we now expect the police to lie, to misuse force, to act illegally, and to be protected against any repercussions from their actions.