Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

Switched to a safety razor

Sometime around late elementary school or early high school I got my first razor as a gift: a Gillette Mach 3 using cartridge blades. I used those more or less exclusively until I began using Harry’s catridge razors in Ottawa or maybe early in my Toronto time around 2012. One lesson I did learn in the UK and used subsequently is that shave oil (like King of Shaves) works better with just a few drops than covering your whole face in foam — plus you can always see what you are doing and thus avoid acne.

About a week ago, something set me off reading reviews and watching videos about safety razors: a style that used double-edged (DE) razor blades, dates back to the early 1900s, and was popularized by WWI. I think it might have been annoyance about how, if I don’t shave for a few days, cartridge razors get instantly clogged up betweeen the blades.

I ordered a Merkur 38C, made in Germany, from the House of Knives in BC because I was worried that the same product from Amazon was likely to be counterfeit. I got 10 Merkur blades, 100 Astra blades, plus two shaving creams (Harry’s and Creamo) and a shaving soap (Proraso).

I got the soap and a basic boar brush a day before the razor, so I tried it with my catridge razor. There is no question that warming your face with hot water and then applying shaving soap with a brush feels excellent on its own, and makes shaving with whatever tool closer, better-feeling, and safer.

With the safety razor, shaving with both cream and foam was surprisingly painless and easy after what all the videos prepared me for. I found no trouble identifying the right angle to let the weight of the razor do the pulling, and I don’t think I came close to cutting myself in any trial. The results are also noticeably noticeably closer: one day after a safety razor shave it feels about as close as one minute after a careful cartridge razor shave with oil.

I still need to obtain or make a sharps bin or ‘blade bank,’ but, despite reading about how many DE safety razor users change blades every time, I have been finding them more than good enough for at least 3-4 shaves.

In the last few years, I have mostly fallen back to shaving every 2-4 days and semi-periodically growing a beard for a week or two. In part I think that’s because of the not-so-satisfying experience of those cartridge blades. The last time I bought a set of Harry’s blades, it was $40 for 16 blades in May 2021. During the first 1-3 uses, they have an effortlessly sharp and clean feeling which feels like how shaving ought to work. However, in less than a week I can feel them starting to pull rather than cut hairs, and leaving behind most of the hairs they cross on each path. Anything but the brand-new-blade feeling isn’t the best shaving experience, and even those three sharp shaves feel a little frustrating because they mean I just threw a blade cartridge away and because I know the new one won’t last long.

I know part of it is just new toy enthusiasm, but since getting the Merkur I have felt a bit disappointed that only one shave a day is required — and would have to be foregone for several days to get long stubble for a DE blade versus cartridge comparison. I’ll report back if I do manage to slash my face open, or if this new toolset becomes entrenched as my long-term default.

This year’s kick of September enthusiasm

I know I will feel differently when teaching and research deadlines start to overlap and the stress compounds, but the experience of the last few days makes me think I had so little energy lately because I had too little to do. There is something very different between having a solitary (but supervised) project where you are always meant to be getting as much done as possible and the social need to be present when expected by others, teach, answer questions, grade, and so on. Even non-academic obligations like recording a recent podcast have cost me standard hours of sleep but added rather than subtracted energy.

Teaching in 2022

With my dissertation largely done and PhD funds much depleted, I am taking a final TA job in POL106 “Contemporary Challenges to Democracy: Democracy in the Social Media Age” (Professor Ronald Deibert).

The subject matter is obviously at an introductory level, and it relates to courses where I have been a TA before: POL211 “Intelligence, Disinformation & Deception: Challenges of Global Governance in the Digital Age” (Professors Jon Lindsay and Janice Stein) and ENV381 “Social Media and Environmentalism” (Professor Steve Easterbrook).

Ron Deibert is the founder and director of U of T’s very interesting Citizen Lab, which will add to the interest of the course.

My brother Mica is starting this term as a teacher at the Bodwell High School in North Vancouver, and Sasha is starting his second year at the Chief Jimmy Bruneau Regional High School. It’s neat that we will all be teaching this term.

Onward toward examiners

A complete dissertation manuscript in LaTeX format is done and in the hands of my committee.

Now, I should get comments from a professor within the department but outside my committee (internal external) and a political scientist from a different university (external external).

Once I address their comments, we can move to the dissertation defence, which my committee is currently expecting in November.

To do lists telescoping down

Despite still not being at 100% physically or mentally, I am working through a four-step process for getting through all dissertation-related to-do lists, including emails to self, project tracking spreadsheets, and tasks written on physical notecards:

  1. Is there anything essential to successfully defending the dissertation still unfinished?
  2. Create final MS Word version for the LaTeX conversion. Accept all tracked changes.
  3. Convert Word manuscript into LaTeX, including complete footnotes.
  4. Re-write the final ten pages of the conclusion to better serve as a summary of the overall argument and statement about the work’s contribution to the literature.

The target date for the LaTeX version, ready for external examiners, and the new closing pages is the end of August.

Again through familiar pages

This weekend I have been working through a complete draft of my dissertation, with two tasks in mind. Now that the big pieces are in place, I can work on making sure the whole thing is as well-written as possible and flows smoothly. Also, I am incorporating comments from my third committee member on chapters 2-4, most of which are either requests for more substantiation, objections to excessive substantiation, and requests for clearer storytelling.

The aim is to have this next draft finished tomorrow, essentially completing the project of having a draft ready for the internal external examiner by the end of July.

Authorship under supervision

I haven’t done much of anything lately, aside from the bare necessities of life, other than work toward a version of my dissertation that will be ready for the external examiners.

It has been very hard for me not to have final control over the document, which I have had in every other context since leaving the government.

I suppose the PhD dissertation is the pinacle of scrutiny for a piece of writing — totally different from all the research papers I have written during the program, which just get a grade and some comments from one person. It’s weird for me to have authorship and responsibility for the content of a document, but not the final say about what I can actually put in it and how. I know this is all to make it conform to the norms and standards of a particular and esoteric style of writing, but it’s still a command structure that I keep grating against.

No doubt, the way I keep bumping up against this approach partly explains the delays and frustration on all sides.

Jumping between manuscript chapters

I am still fighting toward a complete draft of my dissertation, to go to the external examiners by the end of the month.

The three central chapters — political opportunity, mobilizing structures, and repertoires — have gone to my 3rd committee member, but the other two don’t want to share his comments until we have finished going back and forth on the introduction and conclusion.

I sent a revised conclusion on Monday and am working on the latest comments on the introduction before I switch back. Today I went to the libraries on campus to have another look at Jennifer Hadden’s Networks in Contention, which we are using to situate the project in the scholarly literature.

The next version of the introduction is due at the end of the day tomorrow.

COVID-19 in summer 2022

Despite what you might think based on the behaviour of governments and many Ontario residents, the COVID pandemic continues: ‘It’s the real deal’: Doctors warn about future wave fuelled by Omicron variants.

I am continuing much as I have for the last two years: mostly going out only for groceries and exercise walks, avoiding group events and wearing a mask when I do attend, and generally not trying to get sick at a time when illness could interrupt my dissertation completion and wedding travel plans, not to mention threaten vulnerable family members in August.

My advice: get vaccinated, keep masking, and ignore the pushy folks who will try to bully you into taking fewer precautions because they don’t want to follow them.