Archive for the ‘Knives’ Category

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Don’t be evil. Again.

Thursday, July 25th, 2013

A while back, I wrote about the Knife Depot and their battle with Google’s Adwords people over selling “assisted opening” knives. The Knife Depot lost their Adwords account because they refused to cave in to Google’s demand that they stop selling (not just advertising, but selling) “assisted opening” knives, which are legal in every state of the Union.

Dan Lawton over at the Knife Depot was kind enough to share a couple of his followup posts with me. Adwords restored the Knife Depot’s account in May, but imposed a requirement that the Knife Depot couldn’t have “assisted opening” knives on any of the landing pages.

Then Google yanked the Adwords account again…this time, because Google has a problem with “throwing knives”.

Could you injure someone with a throwing knife? Sure, in the same way you could injure someone with a baseball, a frying pan, a brick, a bottle, a rabid cat or a slew of other projectiles that can become weapons if paired with malicious intent.
However, a throwing knife is poorly suited for criminal activity. These knives are generally large, making them hard to conceal; they have blunt edges and they’re damn hard to throw with fatal accuracy.

I have no joke here, I just wanted an excuse to post this:

But wait, there’s more! You know who else doesn’t like knives? Yes! Facebook!

But surely Google has learned their lesson, and these policies are being applied equally to all vendors? Unlike the “assisted opening” advertising ban, in which Google allowed big vendors like Amazon and Walmart to advertise those knives, while cutting off the Knife Depot and smaller vendors? Right?

Hahahahahahahaha. Nope. Google is still operating on the same double standard they had back in March – the same double standard that was openly called out by a Google employee in internal communication – and refuses to offer any explanation of why certain vendors are allowed to advertise “assisted opening” knives, “throwing knives”…or “herbal incense”, for that matter.

Thanks to Mr. Lawton for bringing my attention to these posts. And, as a side note to people who want me to write about their stuff, this is the way to do it: Mr. Lawton sent me a nice, personalized email summarizing his posts, politely suggesting that I might want to write about them based on my previous coverage, and even provided some evidence that he’s actually read more of the blog than just that one post. He had my curiosity when I saw the email; by the time I finished reading it, he had my attention.

(For the record, the Knife Depot hasn’t given me anything – money, knives, gift certificates, or anything of value – in exchange for this post. Nor have I asked for anything.)

Posted in Admin, Clippings, Geek, Knives | Comments Closed

Speaking of guns…

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

…stolen from my great and good friend RoadRich:

This is why I am such a big advocate of stricter knife control, and most importantly, a ban on assault knives. People don’t need knives that powerful for hunting… what are they planning to do, overthrow the caring, benevolent government? And those clips that hold more than one knife? Those… what are they called, ‘leatherman’ clips? Who needs those for so-called ‘hunting’? What are they hunting anyway, speaker wire and Phillips screws? Ban those too… because if even one person gets stabbed, even while trying to get at the tweezers, it is too many. Too many. Only the Army should be trying to clean a fish or strip a wire anyway.

The only thing I’d add to that is that I’m waiting for the victims of this particular act of violence to show up at a State of the Union address and testify before Congress, etc. etc. etc.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Knives, Law | Comments Closed

Don’t be evil.

Tuesday, March 26th, 2013

This isn’t about Google Reader or Google Keep (though I do like this take on the latter). I ran across this story on the Y Combinator Twitter feed the other day, and this is the first chance I’ve had to blog it; I would like to see it get more attention.

In brief, there is a company called the Knife Depot that sells knives online. I have never bought anything from the Knife Depot, but that’s just because I haven’t been buying a lot of knives online; I certainly have not heard anything bad about the company.

The Knife Depot also had a Google Adwords account, which brought in “a good slice of its revenue”.

The Knife Depot sells what are commonly known as “assisted opening” knives. These are not switchblades, but knives that can be opened with one hand by applying pressure on a part of the knife. (The Knife Depot blog has a good video explaining the difference between “assisted opening” and “switchblade” knives.) Obviously, “assisted opening” knives are very useful things if you’re missing an arm, or frequently operate in situations where you only have one hand free, or have certain physical disabilities, or just like knives.  “Assisted opening” knives are legal pretty much everywhere in the United States, including New York City (in spite of what the criminals who run NYC believe).

However, somebody in the Google Adwords department got bent out of shape and told the Knife Depot: either stop selling “assisted opening” knives, or lose your Adwords account.

Note that Google didn’t just say “you can’t advertise these knives using Adwords”. Even if the Knife Depot agreed not to use Adwords to advertise “assisted opening” knives, Google would still yank their Adwords account if they continued to sell those knives on their site.

The Knife Depot, being good and honorable people, told Google to take their Adwords account and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

“So what?” you say. “Google is a private business and can set whatever policies they want for Adwords. Why get bent out of shape over this?”

Here’s why: at the same time Google was threatening the Knife Depot, Google continued to allow Adwords advertising of “assisted opening” knives from other vendors. Like Amazon. And Wal-Mart. And Bass Pro Shops. I believe Google is still allowing Adwords advertising of “assisted opening” knives from those vendors, based on the results of a Google search for “Kershaw knives” done as I was writing this post.

Yes, this is hypocritical and evil. So much so that the Knife Depot blog entry quotes an email from a Google employee who called out the policy discrepancy, requested an explanation of why other vendors were allowed to use Adwords and the Knife Depot was not…and never got a reply.

I’ve had it in my head to do a post about Android/iPhone based on some things said in recent podcasts. I may still do that, though time has sort of gotten past me. The key thing that bothers me is that some people seem to prefer Android/Google because “Google does a better job of knowing about me”, without realizing that’s a problem. You are giving your information to a company that, to be polite, hasn’t proven it can be trusted with it. The Knife Depot is just example #947 of why Google hasn’t proven that.

I commented to someone, back a decade ago, that we didn’t have to worry about the government or big corporations invading our privacy without our consent; we’d happily give up our privacy for 75 cents off a box of Pop-Tarts. It is worse than I thought ten years ago; now we’re giving up our privacy for…what, exactly? A substitute notepad application? A free copy of The Da Vinci Code?

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Knives, Stupid | Comments Closed

“…a community of knife geeks”

Saturday, March 16th, 2013

Just noticed in the LAT (sorry): a profile of Jonathan Broida.

Mr. Broida runs a shop in Venice (California, not Italy) called Japanese Knife Imports. But:

Walk into his shop as a novice and he won’t just sell you a knife. He’ll want to sit down at the low table in the center of the room, preferably over genmaicha tea served in a lovely ceramic tea bowl, made by his wife Sara’s family in northern Japan, and explore your relationship to knives. Call him a knife shrink. What sorts of things do you like to cook? How are your knife skills? What kinds of things do you cut? What sort of cutting board do you have? What other knives do you own? How comfortable are you with sharpening your own knife?

Mr. Brodia used to be a professional cook, and caters to that community.

With a degree in Asian studies, he had started cooking for a living, and at one point went to work in Japan. There, he asked his chef to show him how to sharpen his knife. Big mistake. Soon he was expected to sharpen everybody’s knives, he says with a laugh. But he learned, and he got better at it.
Every chef he met had a different technique. But they were still chefs who sharpened knives, he explains, not professional knife sharpeners. And there’s a big difference. As he got more interested, he sought out craftsmen who could show him more. During that process he found father-son professional sharpeners who were the best he’d ever seen. And he still goes back every year to work with them.

And that’s the key to his shop. He’s less interested in selling you a knife:

The most important thing, he says, is knowing how to sharpen. He can do it for you, but it’s better if you learn yourself. “There’s always a level of disconnect with your tools if you don’t sharpen your own, and that bothers me.”

This is one of my many character flaws. My father tried to teach me to sharpen knives on a whetstone when I was younger, but I didn’t have the patience to learn. These days, I think I could sharpen a knife if I had to, but I have a lot of trouble holding the knife at a constant angle. I’ve tried various gadgets, but what I end up doing is taking my knives to a local knife shop or the gun show when they need to be sharpened. That’s the lazy man’s way of working; I feel like I should be better than that.

And, interestingly, Japanese Knife Imports has a YouTube channel with sharpening demonstrations.

I’m not going to California any time soon (I don’t have a passport, so I can’t travel outside of the United States), but this place sounds like somewhere I could drop a lot of money fast.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Geek, Knives | 2 Comments »

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