Later On

I chose another Kell’s Original today, a Hemp Blend instead of his Hemp/Aloe Vera Blend (which I slightly prefer). The Amber has a muted but pleasant fragrance, and I got a good lather without difficulty using my new Rod Neep brush.

I tried a relatively inexpensive razor today, the Timor. Not a bad shave: more aggressive than the Weishi, but not scary: more or less along the lines of the 40′s Super Speed. One corner did seem to have a sharp point, possibly from the stamping. No cuts or scrapes, but I could feel it from time to time. Still: on the whole a good shave.

A splash of D.R. Harris Pink aftershave, and I’m good to go.

And, on a happy note, Rasage Poulin in western Canada, is back open for business and awaiting your orders.

I’m watching with considerable interest and enjoyment Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies on Watch Instantly. Highly recommended if you like movies and art—and who doesn’t?

I’m just at the point where Chuck Close is talking about how in cubist paintings it’s as if the color has been sucked out—like taking a color TV and turning the color adjustment way down. He said that he couldn’t say what their reasons were, but he got rid of color in his paintings because he didn’t want to depend on it, he didn’t want the entertainment value of color in the paintings. And by taking it out, putting it aside, he could could better focus on the structure, the information, the rest of the painting.

It occurred to me that is part of what the template does: by taking fat, starch, and protein out of the picture, as it were, by specifying them so precisely as to quantity (2 tsp, scant serving, 3-4 oz respectively) and by settling on just a few handy options (olive oil, duck fat, or butter; whole grain itself or as coucous or pasta; tofu or tempeh), I can now focus totally on the vegetables and the prep choices, though more and more I do a kind of stew without the liquid: using very little liquid, just enough for the starch to absorb as it cooks (and steam the greens). I do sauté some of the veg first.

Still: the point is that by subtracting the traditional focus—the first thing that hits your eye normally—and removing that from consideration, the remainder stands in much higher relief and becomes of greater interest. As you see.

Good movie, anyway.

Failure is hard to take, on the whole. But since failure is the doorway to learning, it’s good to learn how to open the door—how to use failure to glean lessons and improve learning—than simply to bounce off it and never realize that it opens. People who don’t learn how to use failure tend to avoid it whenever they can, and that strategy traps them in an ever-narrowing circle of things that are easy for them. Far better to discover how to exploit failure, how to make the most of it, squeeze every answer—as well as some better questions—from every single failure. This is the idea that we learn more from our failures than from our successes—though that might be because we tend to think about and analyze our failures more than our successes.

In this connection, let me just draw your attention to Martin Seligman’s fascinating book Learned Optimisim (inexpensive secondhand copies at the link—note condition before you buy: nothing less than “good,” I should say).

And also note this article by Paul Tough in the NY Times:

Dominic Randolph can seem a little out of place at Riverdale Country School — which is odd, because he’s the headmaster. Riverdale is one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools, with a 104-year-old campus that looks down grandly on Van Cortlandt Park from the top of a steep hill in the richest part of the Bronx. On the discussion boards of UrbanBaby.com, worked-up moms from the Upper East Side argue over whether Riverdale sends enough seniors to Harvard, Yale and Princeton to be considered truly “TT” (top-tier, in UrbanBabyese), or whether it is more accurately labeled “2T” (second-tier), but it is, certainly, part of the city’s private-school elite, a place members of the establishment send their kids to learn to be members of the establishment. Tuition starts at $38,500 a year, and that’s for prekindergarten.

Randolph, by contrast, comes across as an iconoclast, a disrupter, even a bit of an eccentric. He dresses for work every day in a black suit with a narrow tie, and the outfit, plus his cool demeanor and sweep of graying hair, makes you wonder, when you first meet him, if he might have played sax in a ska band in the ’80s. (The English accent helps.) He is a big thinker, always chasing new ideas, and a conversation with him can feel like a one-man TED conference, dotted with references to the latest work by behavioral psychologists and management gurus and design theorists. When he became headmaster in 2007, he swapped offices with his secretary, giving her the reclusive inner sanctum where previous headmasters sat and remodeling the small outer reception area into his own open-concept work space, its walls covered with whiteboard paint on which he sketches ideas and slogans. One day when I visited, one wall was bare except for a white sheet of paper. On it was printed a single black question mark.

For the headmaster of an intensely competitive school, Randolph, who is 49, is surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education. He did away with Advanced Placement classes in the high school soon after he arrived at Riverdale; he encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign; and he says that the standardized tests that Riverdale and other private schools require for admission to kindergarten and to middle school are “a patently unfair system” because they evaluate students almost entirely by I.Q. “This push on tests,” he told me, “is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.”

The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”

Randolph has been pondering throughout his 23-year career as an educator the question of whether and how schools should impart good character. It has often felt like a lonely quest, but it has led him in some interesting directions. . .

Continue reading.

Okay, I’ve caved and will bring out a Kindle version. I found that CreateSpace has a conversion service that will do the work, so I have them working on it now. It takes a few weeks (!).

My big worry is the photos: I think they’re gong to drift around a bit. Probably if I come out with a new edition, I’ll add figure numbers and captions so I can refer in the text to photos by identifier rather than by location on the page. But that will be then, and we’re going ahead now.

What made me decide (beyond the constant drumbeat for a Kindle edition) is that a Kindle edition would be sold in the UK (and Germany) as well as in the US. I have wanted to make it easy for the novice shavers in the UK (and Canada, but Amazon doesn’t extend this generosity to Amazon.ca) to get the information, and physical books are simply too expensive to ship. So this is a start.

Couldn’t wait to use the new brush by Rod Neep. I was pleased to see that the coin in the base works well: it’s only full display as you work up the lather, and is a very nice touch. And work up the lather it did: I get a fine, thick, dense lather from Mama Bear‘s Indian Sandalwood—and an excellent fragrance. I believe the “new recipe” reference dates from a few years back and refers to her move to add shea butter to the soap.

I haven’t used my Edwin Jagger Lined Chatsworth for a while, but it’s the same shaver-friendly razor I remember: good heft, good balance, and works like a charm, this morning with a Swedish Gillette blade.

After 3 smooth passes and a swipe of the alum bar, I did a final rinse, dry, and splash of Saint Charles Shave Sandalwood: extremely nice. I detected a “fresh cookie” note to the fragrance, but that’s just me.

Jim Garrigan: Beyond the Pale. Made me laugh very hard. I do it for the endorphins. Save the endorphins!

I just got three new shaving brushes from PensOfTheForest.co.uk: Rodney Neep’s site. I like his handle designs, particularly those in wood:

He offers the option on some brushes (the two on the right above, for example) of insetting a British coin into the base of the brush, your choice of year:

1940 is my natal year, and 1996 is the The Older Grandson’s. It occurs to me that I should order a brush in reserve for The Younger Grandson.

I just learned about from this post at Kafeneio. If you have an iPad and don’t know about it, worth a click.

Full disclosure: Honeybee Soaps created the Fresh Lemon shaving soap at my request, so naturally I like it a lot. And with the Vie-Long horsehair brush, I got what seemed to me to be Creamy Lather. The Pils, with a Swedish Gillette blade, provided three very nice passes. I just got the Nancy Boy aftershave gel. I’m not sure which essential oils are included, but it had somewhat the impact of the eucalyptus, tea tree, and menthol combination: a hit of that will wake you up. Nice feel on the face, and I’m ready for the day.

I like Honeybee Soaps in general: good fragrances, good lather, and the soap includes shea butter. Her shave sticks do include one with Rose fragrance (we were looking for those the other day). The jar above is my own: I bought a round and melted it at low heat (never over 150ºF/65ºC) to pour into my own jar. Easier on the whole just to buy the soap already in a jar.

At long last schools will no longer be held hostage to the strange restrictions imposed on instructional materials (history and science, mainly) that are intended to provide factual information, something that some school board members (and often a majority) did not want.

Here’s the story by Mary Tuma in the Washington Independent:

The State Board of Education’s power to dictate which instructional materials Texasclassrooms use is weakened as a largely unforeseen consequence of a law passed this summer.

Senate Bill 6 by state Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) allows school districts to buy textbooks and instructional materials with state dollars, even if the board has not signed off on those materials. Traditionally, districts could only use SBOE-approved texts, but the new legislation widens the scope of available material for subjects like science and history — areas where the board’s selections have garnered criticism for factual flaws and conservative bias.

“This law means local school districts will no longer be held hostage to the personal agendas of state board politicians when choosing instructional materials for their students,” Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller said in a statement.

TFN, a watchdog organization that closely monitors the education board, celebrated the new law as an opportunity to reject controversial materials adopted by the SBOE, noting the long history of heated Texas textbook battles including efforts to censor information on sex education, evolution, slavery and civil rights. In 2001, the group points out, the SBOE declined a potential environmental science textbook because some board members objected to information on ties between climate change and industrial pollution. . .

Continue reading.

And it’s a Cool Tool. I have one on order. I haven’t had a good knife sharpener on hand since I threw the Chef’s Choice electric in the trash: it sharpens for a while, then it switches to dullens and stays there until you send it in for $60 service; repeat until you throw it in the trash. I caught on after the initial failure. And that’s corporate America: make a knife sharpener that will (without notice or warning) dull the knives until the customer gives us more money.

I do like the Apex a lot, but this one looks more reasonable. And it’s worth a shot. It’ll be better than the Chef’s Choice. (Full disclosure: the Chef’s Choice electric kettle, in contrast, is rather nice. So far.)

Makers, by Cory Doctorow, I didn’t like so much, though I’m sure many will. For me, it failed to deliver on its promise. Ready Player One, by Ernet Cline, I thoroughly enjoyed. Both are sf and both deal with the entertainment industry, though different facets of it.

The Morris & Forndran does a terrific job—great brush. I worked up a wonderful lather from QED’s Mocha Java shave stick: wonderful fragrance and wonderfully dense and thick lather. Since this is the glycerin-soap week, I will be focusing on the melt-and-pour soups.

Three smooth passes with the Merkur vintage Slant with a Schick Plus Platinum blade, then a splash of Saint Charles Shave’s Neroli Blend aftershave, and I’m off to a fine start.

I really want one of these sharpeners:

This is just the first of the series of videos. Here you can find the lot.

I have a Dirty Bird scuttle on the way:

We knew:

Trent Hamm has a good discussion of the book Your Money or Your Life, which can truly change your view of both money and life. He discusses some of the main ideas in this post.

Hamm likes that book a LOT—and no wonder: it seems to have been this book, more than any other, that stimulated his change in life direction, from IT professional to self-employed entrepreneur (and a much happier guy, to all appearances). Here are the posts in which he works his way through the book in detail:

Prologue (pages xxiii to xxxviii)
The Money Trap (pages 1 to 9)
Prosperity and the Planet (pages 9 to 21)
The Beginning of a New Road Map for Money (pages 21 to 29)
Step 1 – Making Peace with the Past (pages 29 to 39)
Money Ain’t What It Used To Be (And Never Was) (pages 40 to 59)
Step 2 – Being in the Present and Tackling Your Life Energy (pages 59 to 75)
Where Is It All Going? (pages 76 to 87)
Totaling It All Up (pages 87 to 108)
How Much Is Enough? The Nature of Fulfillment (pages 109 to 112)
Three Questions That Will Transform Your Life (pages 113 to 128)
Assessing the Three Questions (pages 128 to 145)
Seeing Progress (pages 146 to 157)
Getting Your Finances Out in the Open (pages 157 to 165)
The American Dream – on a Shoestring (pages 166 to 171)
Ten Sure Ways to Save Money (pages 171 to 181)
101 Sure Ways to Save Money (Part One) (pages 181 to 197)
101 Sure Ways to Save Money (Part Two) (pages 197 to 212)
Additional Thoughts on Cutting Spending (pages 213 to 218)
For Love or Money (pages 219 to 231)
The Stunning Implications of Redefining Work (pages 232 to 246)
Valuing Your Life Energy – Maximizing Income (pages 247 to 258)
The Crossover Point (pages 259 to 268)
The Power of Working for a Finite Period of Time (pages 268 to 279)
The Freedom to Choose What You Do and Do What You Choose (pages 279 to 291)
Now That You’ve Got It, What Are You Going To Do With It? (pages 292 to 305)
Three Pillars of Financial Independence (pages 305 to 318)
Cushions Make For Softer Landings (pages 318 to 327)
Additional Resources (pages 337 to 343)
Your Money or Your Life: Final reflections

Fascinating article in New Scientist by James Pennebaker. (He’s the guy who developed an effective way of treating traumatic stress, unlike CSID, which turns out to be damaging—see Redirect, by Timothy Wilson.) It begins:

STOP for a moment and think about your most recent conversation, email, tweet or text message. Perhaps you think you said something about dinner plans, domestic chores or work. And you probably did. But at the same time, you said much more. The precise words you used revealed more about you than you can imagine.

Hidden inside language are small, stealthy words that can reveal a great deal about your personality, thinking style, emotional state and connections with others. These words account for less than 0.1 per cent of your vocabulary but make up more than half of the words commonly used. Your brain is not wired to notice them but if you pay close attention, you will start to see their subtle power.

I’m a social psychologist whose interest in these words came about almost accidentally. In the early 1980s, I stumbled on a finding that fascinated me. People who reported having a traumatic experience and who kept the experience a secret had far more health problems than people who talked openly. Why would keeping a secret be so unhealthy? If you asked people to write about their secrets, would their health improve? The answer, I soon discovered, was yes.

As part of this work, we developed a computer program to analyse the language people used when they wrote about traumas. We made numerous discoveries using this tool, such as the value of using words associated with positive emotions.

However, our most striking discovery was not about the content of people’s writing but the style. In particular, we found that the use of pronouns – I, me, we, she, they – mattered enormously. The more people changed from using first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my) to using other pronouns (we, you, she, they) from one piece of writing to the next, the better their health became. Their word use reflected their psychological state.

This was the prelude to a more substantial discovery that has become my life’s work. I found myself reading endless reams of text to analyse language style. For example, I wondered if there were any gender distinctions and found that yes, there were significant differences.

As I played with more and more words, certain patterns kept recurring. Not only was gender a factor, there were large differences in language style as a function of people’s age, social class, emotional state, level of honesty, personality, degree of formality, leadership ability, quality of relationships and so on. Word use was associated with almost every dimension of social psychology I studied.

I’m now convinced that by understanding language style, we gain a far clearer sense of the social and psychological processes affecting our behaviours.

What do I mean by style? . . .

Continue reading.

Being list-productive is what The Eldest calls the busy activity of updating and consolidating one’s lists of things to do. You can spend a fair amount of time doing this and end by feeling a sense of accomplishment, though the number of items to do is the same. (This can be remedied by including an item “Review and consolidate to-do lists” which can then be checked off when you’re done.)

Lifehacker tackles the list problem head-on, with a variety of software tools.

Sorry about the bad brush placement. That’s a new Frank Shaving brush, very reasonably priced (though they just raised prices $10). This first use wasn’t bad, though I still feel I have work work harder to get lather from it. I’ll continue to use it, though, and do some side by side comparisons with other brushes. It is certainly reasonably priced, though.

A good lather, withal, from the Woods of Windsor. Phil of Bullgoose Shaving writes (on the SimplyShaving.com forum) that Woods has just changed its formulation: from tallow (old) to non-tallow (new). Mine is old—quite old—so it’s a tallow soap. The Woods puck is quite thick but of narrow diameter (compared to most pucks), but the Marvy mug has a ring in the bottom just right to grip the puck.

Three enjoyable passes with the Eclipse holding a Swedish Gillette blade—I read a comment somewhere that said the Eclipse wasn’t all that good a razor, but for me it’s an excellent razor and shaves extremely well. Just more proof of the YMMV nature of shaving.

A finish with Saint Charles Shave’s high-methol aftershave. I really like her aftershaves, which share an interesting “feel”—hard to describe, but distinctive.