So true.
The irony is, a chopstick or a pencil in the right/wrong hands is just as dangerous.
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So I suppose we should all wrap ourselves padding and go back to eating with our hands because, you know, knives and forks are dangerous.
But then again, you can kill someone with your hands, so I suppose we should have those dealt with somehow.
Seriously, I wish people would just stop with this crap. Anything can be a weapon, but only in the hands of someone who wants to use it as one, which isn't most people. And my sending a straight razor through the mail is about as dangerous as a knife on a table in an empty room. It's only dangerous if some wacko picks it up and starts aiming it at people. This is pretty difficult when I'm in NZ, and the razor is probably floating somewhere over the ocean.
To be fair, the guy didn't really give me any problems sending it, but he still gave me the weirdest look. As if he doesn't have knives in his kitchen, and a huge pair of scissors sitting on his desk. *sigh*
But you have to remember the saying 'going postal' does refer to the number of time postal workers around the world have gone crazy with weapons. And now they have your razor.
I would too, if I did their job. Fortunately my razor couldn't cut butter at the moment! :roflmao
Its always the dull ones that cut you lol
Yeah but they need to keep the public, news, and politicians relatively at bay. If that means not allowing straight razors on planes and giving you weird looks at the post office, then there's nothing we can do about it. They don't know what you're going to do with that box cutter: you may intend on opening a box, but you may also intend on using it to crash a plane into a very important building. We know our intentions, but they can't read our minds. The only safe conclusion is to assume everyone wants to destroy everything in every way possible.
My postman as well as the clerks in the office have seen me come and go so many times they dont question it anymore, at first there were a lot of raised eyebrows but now I and the razors are commonplace to them, Ignorance breeds fear, a short tutorial/conversation about your hobby will go a long way in nuetralizing the fear.
"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither" - Benjamin Franklin
I don't think it's particularly fair for my government to assume that I, a citizen with no criminal history nor any seeming ill will towards anyone, am out to destroy everything in every possible way.
The fact that some airports have the equipment to scan my computer's harddrive, and have searched me for no reason other than the fact that I have tattoos, flies in the face of what a country of the free is supposed to be about.
You can't live your life constantly paranoid about everyone. And if you think that mentality keeps us "safe," well, think again. The baddies are always getting more clever, and we're still focusing on the way they did things 10 years ago. But if they're stupid enough to keep doing illegal things the exact same way for 10 years, they aren't much of a threat, are they.
Paranoia leads to the giving away of rights, and neither freedom nor security can spring from that sort of environment.
I refuse to live in fear of my neighbour. If he wants to own 15 guns and an arsenal of antique battle axes, fine by me. The big question is, do I feel like I can go ask for a pinch of sugar? If yes, then his hobby horse concerns me not.
*cough* Sorry. :soapbox:
Lol while I am not paranoid nor do I think paranoia is justified, it doesn't help when you use fear-politics as your primary basis that terrorists hijack and blow up planes, or that a soldier goes ape shit and kills 15 people. Like, sure its terrible, but how many hundreds of flights take off and land every day, SAFELY? The odds of being on a hijacked plane are literally one in thousands. But when the government puts up an official alert about it, it seems like more of a threat than it is. Why should my plane going from Ithaca NY to Elmira NY be hijacked? Who would want to blow up anything in backwood NY? But for some reason the "security" is blanketed and so the politicians create a threat when there really is none.
Precisely. It always makes the news when someone blows up a building, hijacks a plane, goes on a murderous rampage, or some other insanity.
But the news doesn't report the millions of buildings where nothing significant happened today, the thousands of planes that completed their flights without mishap, or the billions of people who didn't get murdered.
I get so sick of all these underhanded ways of trying to micro-manage our movements and going-on's, under the false veil of "security." Secure from what? People still get shot on the streets, while they're busy giving a chick the size of a garden gnome crap for owning a straight. Please.
I just can't get off this damn soapbox today... :soapbox:
lol. My last soap box comment that I just remembered was some guy sneaked a bomb onto a plane in detroit the other day. By hiding the explosives in his underwear! Genius! Neither explosive nor matches are metal, and no one checks your underwear so...
My philosophy is if someone is crazy/evil enough to do something terrible, they are crazy/evil enough to find a way.
so, does that main you don't even try to stop them? We need to take reasonable safety measures.
Oh never did I say anything about agreeing with the policies; I was merely trying to provide a likely explanation.
Yes but would you like to live your entire life in a padded cell with a controlled atmosphere?
There is reasonable and there is going too far.
I never said you don't try to stop them. But measures which would be likely to stop someone who wants to hurt others or commit a serious crime are not going to interfere with the privacy and freedom of the average person.
The sorts of things we're doing to "protect homeland security" don't actually work. Most have little, if anything, to do with modern techniques of terrorism and nearest I can tell, they're simply a way of keeping tabs on the masses.
ControlFreak - Try and make me! Tiny people are stubborn.
I agree with you on this Mistress. People are walking onto planes with bombs sewn into their clothes but they'll bust your @$$ real god if you try to take a nail file, etc. onto the plane....OOOOOOOOooooo. Not to mention the (pardon my french) **** poor intelligence work that's going on. I keep hearing the failed attempt here in the US around Xmas was a screw up because agencies weren't giving each other information...I seem to recall the same thing being said after 9/11/01...glad to see that they learned their lesson huh?
sorry, i have a lot more hostile words but I would get banned for sure ;)
Apparently the FBI and the CIA have the worst communication of any intelligence networks... ever. What's funny is that they work for the same damn country.
I've been pulled over by TSA, and the resident idiots at the borders of various other countries (though it's funnier when it's the TSA since, you know, I'M AMERICAN AND I LIVE HERE, but anyway...) simply for being dressed a little too hippie-ish, or having tattoos, or whatever. Stuff that has not a goddamn thing to do with national security at all. I look funny. That's reason enough.
I've started carrying some formal clothes in my overnight bag that I change into after I get off the plane just so they don't bug me. Profiling has gone absolutely rampant.
And while they're wasting their time playing 20 questions with me, some dude with tear gas up his sleeve happily walks on through.
It has nothing to do with national security. It's just an extention of the goverment getting way too up in telling people what to do.
:soapbox:
Anyway...
Didn't this start out having something to do with straight razors?
Who cares?
We're having fun.
And it's raining outside.
Government Intelligence. Now there's an oxymoron. :)
Well whatdoyaknow, it's raining down here, too.
Yup.
And we can say whatever we want in English. That's what's so great about it. You make it up as you go along!
Nazism, nazism, nazism, the world is dangerously tending on nazism.
He, stop me i have some liquid soap in my hand !
*living dangerously*:D
well, maybe it's not soap, but anyhow it's gooey so beware !!!!!
:fim:
one of these days im gonna have me a house out in the middle of nowhere...where stupid laws and people wont affect or bother me and just live my life nice quiet and peaceful
no more backwards thinking like the military or doing things that have no purpose
like C-wire around a building..then have to get out 13 more strands fighting it from getting tangle in the wire that has already been placed only not to use the wire it took 3 hours to get out in the first place
or shovel snow off a sidewalk for 3 hours only to have a snow plow come by and spray snow and ice right back on everything you just spent 3 hours cleaning
Sooo back to the straight razor talk!
The wonderful and magnificent Oni has gotten my razor, and low and behold, I have not rolled the edge! Rather, I have somehow managed to put it through a meat grinder.
He sent me some micro pics, and the whole edge was covered in tiny scrapes perpendicular to the edge, like I'd run it over a low-grit hone. But that doesn't make any sense, as the belt I'm using feels perfectly smooth. He said it may be something embedded in the leather too small for me to feel.
And now I'm insanely frustrated. Is it my stropping? Is it my "strop?" I'm so freakin' confused.
If the edge is not rolled, then you were stropping correctly, but if you have a load of tiny nicks in the edge it may be the case that the beslt you are using is not suitable for stropping.
In terms of what you can feel, my Shapton 4k and 16k feel almost the same in smoothness, but Lordy can you tell the difference in the shave if you stop at 4k..!
Because the edge is so fine on a straight razor, the tiniest imperfections can make all the difference between a smooth comfortable shave and a lousy/painful shave..!
It could well be that you need to track down a strop or some suitable leather?
A little trick I have heard of as a short term solution is to strop on clean denim. If you want to keep using the razor, it might be worth a try until you get a strop?
Good luck!
Thanks Stu! It's hard to believe such a smooth-feeling piece of leather could have so much bite, but maybe so. While my stropping wasn't spectacular, I really didn't feel it was *so* bad that it would have obliterated the edge completely. Maybe my initial feeling was right.
I am way too broke to buy a proper strop right now. That may be changing in the next couple weeks. But for the time being, my razor is off getting fixed up, and I'm going to have a look around local leather markets.
I really enjoy making things as a rule, so I figured I may see if I can try to do that. If I stick to KISS theory (Keep It Simple, Stupid), maybe I can wind up with a decent strop that has the added benefit of being something I made with my own hands.
The main difficulty in buying one is where I live. When factoring in shipping and the exchange rate, even a Filly would run me $47. But maybe if I get lucky I can find some leather that's not too expensive. Not sure. I'll have to see.
I'm thinking a very velvet-y smooth suede texture, and fairly thick. Not really sure how to grade leather, honestly. I'm sure the lingo exists though. I'll go do some homework.
The only thing I know is that I'm not putting my razor on that damn belt again!
No probs! :-)
It can be a bit tricky tracking down the bits and bobs you need sometimes..!
If you're going to make a strop, check this article out from the Wiki:
Making a (very) home-made strop - Straight Razor Place Wiki
Good luck and let us know how you get on!
I imagine in NZ people are very handy and you should be able to buy some fairly good quality leather far more easily than here in the states (well at least where I live in the heart of well-to-do-middleclass-ultra-liberalism).
There was a thread in the "Strops" forum a wee while back about making a strop from a piece of bridle leather.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/strop...-7-strops.html
NZ being a somewhat horse-loving country, you might have some luck finding the makings of a strop at a saddlery up in Welly. There's a large nationwide chain called Saddlery Warehouse that may also be able to help, if the smaller non-chain stores don't have what you need.