Are Safety Razors the “green” Choice?

I never thought about it until a few days ago, but I believe they are.

Disposable razors or even cartridge razors (Mach3, Quattro, Fusion, etc.) use all kind of plastic in the cartridges and in the packaging as well. I was shaving the other day and realized how using a safety razor is a greener option. Since new ideas are rare I did some digging on the internet and found other people that switched to safety razors not for their superior performance (like I did) but expressly for their eco-friendliness:

(Going Green)

The timing on this change just happened to be perfect. For several years I have been using a Venus plastic razor with disposable blade heads. These heads are made of plastic and come individually sheathed in mini plastic cups. The whole package of six blade heads is, of course, then wrapped in more plastic. None of which is recyclable in my area.

(Fake Plastic Fish)

I’ve been using this razor for nearly one month. In fact, I’ve been using the same blade the whole time too. At this rate, the box of 100 that I bought from a guy on eBay could last me 8 years! Of course, I don’t shave every day, so your mileage may vary. But just think of all the plastic cartridges and packaging that I am not throwing away.

Yet another reason to use a safety razor instead of a modern cartridge or disposable. All this in addition to the fact that the blades are cheaper (mine cost about $0.25 in boxes of 250) and the shave is far better than some vibrating 5 blade contraption.

My New HP II

Since nearly all my work history as an IT guy has been working at financial services companies, I’m working on my MS in applied mathematics, and I enjoy financial mathematics, I decided that it would be fun and lucrative to try to become a CFA charterholder. The exams are very difficult (average passing rate is about 40%) and only two calculators are allowed. One is the TI BAII Plus, which I wont use because I don’t like TI calculators. The other is the HP 12c, which I will use because HP calculators, in my experience, are vastly superior to offerings from TI or Casio. If this calculator acquisition business continues, I’m going to be one of those strange people who has every model of HP calculator dating back to 1980 or something.

I really knew I’d made it as a nerd when I was excited about new calculator purchases.

Best. xkcd. Ever.

All us mathematicians can appreciate this, even the applied ones. So true.

Cheap Blade Safe

I’m what I like to call…frugal. Armed with that knowledge you can see why even something as inexpensive as a $0.99 blade safe isn’t worth buying. Instead of spending my hard earned change, I just made one from a 20 oz. Pepsi bottle by making 3 cuts in the upper part of the bottle and pushing the attached plastic inward. I plan on putting a few layers of tape over it when the bottle gets full and I throw it away.

Behold, my cheapskate engineering.

Miscellany II

Well it looks like I haven’t posted since the last day of April. There’s a good reason for that, namely that I’ve been busy. I had finals the first week of May, then the lead-up to Whitney’s graduation on the 18th, then we left the 19th to go to Idaho and didn’t return until June 31st. We stayed home for a few days but went to Ft. Worth last weekend. I really haven’t had the time nor the inclination to do much in the way of writing. However, during the last month or so I’ve collected some bookmarks that I’ve planned on writing about so I present another miscellany post.

1. Sean Carroll wrote an interesting article in one of his favorite areas of research (and mine), the direction of time, for Scientific American:

   The basic laws of physics work equally well forward or backward in time, yet we perceive time to move in one direction only—toward the future. Why?
   To account for it, we have to delve into the prehistory of the universe, to a time before the big bang. Our universe may be part of a much larger multiverse, which as a whole is time-symmetric. Time may run backward in other universes.

2. As someone who is involved in academia the growing distaste that the general public has with all endeavors intellectual pains me greatly. I thought I was just turning into a grumpy old man, even though I’m only 25, but evidently this problem has been around for a while. Many articles and even books have been written on the subject of anti-intellectualism, and the one I happened to stumble across was in the Washington Post:

   It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an “elitist,” one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just “folks,” a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.”) Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

   Sean Carroll over at Cosmic Variance also blogged about the topic.

3. The Center for American Progress (who saw it in Texas Monthly) noted some terrible information about the sex education program in Texas schools.

   Under current federal standards, any sex education program receiving federal funds must conform to “abstinence only” guidelines, which means mentioning contraception only to discuss its failures and teaching, among other things, that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”

   The puritanical handling of sex in this country isn’t doing anybody any good. I’m wondering where these people are who ignore reality to such an extent that they think teaching pro-abstinence sex-ed will be successful. Loons, every one of them.

4. I looked around at the websites for SciPy and SAGE but haven’t tried them out yet. I guess I’m going to be learning some more Python.

   While talking about SciPy at vetta project they made a statement that’s probably very familiar to those of us with a strong computation background.

   Now this is great in a sense. You end up throwing away most of your code now that all the real computation work is being done by sophisticated mathematical functions which are using optimised matrix computation libraries. The bottleneck in writing code isn’t in the writing of the code, it’s in understanding and conceptualising what needs to be done. Once you’ve done that, i.e. come up with mathematical objects and equations that describe your algorithm, you simply express these in a few lines of scipy and hit go.

5. There is new 60 MPG Volkswagen Jetta with a diesel engine that will be available here again. I’m really glad to see the increasing popularity of diesel engines in the US. They’re more efficient and better for the environment. What more could you reasonably ask for?

   Before people mention that diesel costs more, consider that the increased efficiency (30% on average) exceeds the increased cost. If you pay the average gas price of $4.039/gal then a break-even price for diesel is (.3)(4.039) + 4.039 = $5.25/gal. The average price for diesel is only $4.69. That means that if you have a diesel engine you’re really saving about 56 cents per gallon, assuming 30% increased efficiency. I’d love to save 56 cents per gallon.

   I was hoping that the smart fourtwo would be available in the US with a diesel (which got around 60mpg) but they are only offering a gasoline version which gets 41mpg on the highway. My Honda Civic gets 39-40mpg on the highway and it has 4 doors, a full back seat, and a sizable trunk. Buying a smart is not in the cards. Bad move on smart’s part.

That’s all for now. I have more time these days since I don’t have any classes during the first summer semester so I may be posting more often. We’ll see.

Level 70 At Last

Note: I just found this in my drafts and it was last edited 3/12/2008. I don’t remember when I finally hit 70 but we’ll go with that day I suppose. Orc warlock on Bloodhoof, by the way.

In only 11 days, 15.5 hours /played

My New HP

I had to go to Fry’s today to get some RAM and while I was there I decided to pick up a new HP 35s to replace my HP 33s. The 33s has a decent layout but the keys are a bit spongy and loud. The keys on the 35s are square so the layout of the keypad is much easier to search through. In addition, the key press is short and sweet, i.e. it doesn’t have the same spongy feeling. Another advantage is the case for the 35s, which is a hard design that zips around the perimeter and has an elastic strap that goes over the calculator body between the display and the keyboard but doesn’t obstruct the view of either. There is also an elastic pouch on the opposite side to stash extra batteries, paper, or whatever.

The downside, however, is that while the 33s came with a paperback bound version of the users manual, the 35s only came with the manual on CDROM. That agitates me. It’s a small price to pay I suppose, and it saved .0000000003453 of a tree. Hooray.

It’s still not possible to save programs to my computer with some kind of IR or USB cable, but I don’t do much programming on it anyway.

The improved keypad alone is worth it.

George Bush Makes My Brain Hurt

Sometimes I really do think that the people in this administration are completely insane. This George Bush quote from Salon is nuts.

“A clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces that tend to divide people up inside their country are unbelievably counterproductive.”—after touring a genocide memorial, Kigali, Rwanda, Feb. 19, 2008

Wow.

Miscellany

I was writing one post per topic, but then I figured that was lame RSS reader spam and so I’m going to combine all my small posts into one.

1. I used to like Ben Stein, but the fact that he’s involved with a new movie that touts the scientific validity of intelligent design chaps my ass. Intelligent design is not science.
2. For those who think that rubber bullets aren’t painful, I would refer them to Shanbo Heinemann. He’s a pro-Palestinian activist from San Francisco who was shot in the forehead by Israeli soldiers with a rubber bullet. It looks pretty painful to me.
   
3. Do you often have excuses about why you can’t do something? Stop.
   
4. There’s a new book out about anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism in America. It’s really irritating for knowledgeable and logical people to be dismissed outright. What’s worse is when you present a fact and people tell you that it’s your opinion or that everything somebody says must be biased so there really aren’t such things as facts. This happens to me often when debating WMD in Iraq. There were none and everybody knows it, except for the people that don’t believe any reports of any kind because people wrote the reports and … wait for it … they’re just somebody’s opinion.
5. Some people are big on attacking Iran right now and they don’t understand why there is such animosity towards the US by some Iranians. That’s because Americans in general are ignorant and not aware of the history surrounding the issue. I suggest the below video for a brief overview.
   
6. Lots of people are dying in Iraq and most of them are Iraqis. It seems like that fact is background noise for a lot of people these days.
   

   Adem Hadei, Associated Press. A woman takes her dead son into her arms, as she grieves for her six-year-old son, Dhiya Thamer, who was killed when their family car came under fire by unknown gunmen in Baqouba, capital of Iraq’s Diyala province, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007.

7. It seems like Big Brother is getting bigger…and bigger….and bigger. The FBI is currently soliciting bids for a $1 billion contract to collect biometric data on people.
   I’ll let the convey my opinion:
   
8. Ted Haggard from the New Life Church ended his rehab program prematurely. I guess the exorcist couldn’t get the gay out. This implies that either there is no god or sexual orientation cannot be changed. I’m happy either way because it disagrees with the statements by many religious nut jobs.
9. Gina Carano is hot and a good fighter. She looked really good at a recent weigh-in:
   

   A video of her wins:
   

   Unfortunately for me, but probably not for her, she’s gained 15lbs and is now on American Gladiators as Crush:
   

I think that covers it for now.

I’m glad I sold my sportbike

This guy had a really bad day. Actually, his day was probably going fine right up to the point that his head went through the back of the trailer. It’s his family that had the really bad day.

Darwin at work.