SOTD – I.K. addict

The Institute Karite shave soap and cream have rapidly become two of my favorite shaving concoctions. I would go so far as to say that the superlather emanating from the combination of these two is the best I’ve ever found…rich, creamy, thick, wet, and slick. Worked up with the Plisson European White badger brush, the I.K. products produce a lather that seems to go on forever. A fresh Gillette 7 O’Clock from Russia produced an incredibly smooth shave, finished off with the Cromwell & Cruthers Oil, for a wonderful 9.5 result. Interestingly, I find that not all oils are equally effective; the Cromwell and Cruthers appears somewhat thicker than my TSS, and doesn’t quite produce the same “polish” on the final pass.

Meanwhile, the Gillette 7 O’Clock has been accepted into my “permanent” collection, along with the Treet Blue Special and the Sputnik. The Gillette is a terrific blade – extremely sharp but not so smooth that it doesn’t give some feedback…very important if you want to avoid nicks. The Feather for example is so sharp and smooth that before you even know it you’ve been sliced and diced (of course, YMMV).

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Snopes.com

Well-meaning friends continue to forward emails containing warnings about a host of hazardous products (microwaves, plastics, etc.) or spectacular events (sharks flying out of the water to grab low-flying helicopters, etc.). Ninety-nine percent of these are hoaxes and well-known urban legends. About ten years ago, when the internet became an increasingly important referencing resource for academic papers, I took a course on how to validate the information one finds in that virtual world. A great site that I came across is snopes.com. This site is constantly investigating and reporting on thousands of internet stories, analyzing their sources, and their relative truth. For me, it has become an invaluable tool for checking any story I want to forward, as well as validating information I receive from others.

10 good reasons to eat in

Reading this MSN piece about the realities of the restaurant industry brought back memories of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential – updated for the 21st Century. I had several “Oh yeah!” moments as I recalled my most recent restaurant meal. Scare-mongering really isn’t my thing when it comes to food – I figure that the body needs a pretty steady dose of a variety of bacteria to make sure the immune system is always ready to handle the bigger nasties. But the issues brought up in the MSN article really point to the way restaurants all have to cut corners just to stay in business…..and a lot of those corners have to do with hygiene. BTW, Bourdain wrote about it in the year 2000 and the MSN article reiterates it……the washroom is the definitive place to check first if you want to know about the level of pride and attention a restaurant takes in everything it does. To paraphrase Bourdain, “If they don’t care about the one place visible to the customer, how much attention are they paying to the places that aren’t”.