jointmaker pro, tablesaw for idiots
over the last little while, i have seen a raft of glowing reviews of the jointmaker pro by bridge city. i have to admit, when i first saw this thing i thought it was the most stupid tool i could possibly imagine. a tablesaw for people who didn’t want to actually use a tablesaw because they were so judgmental of using electricity they’d actually spend this kind of money on…
the beauty of the pull-stroke
in japan, as in most of asia, most woodworking is done a little differently from western approaches. it is cultural. in a society based on harmony and integration, sacrificing your own safety and pulling the sharp tool became the norm over centuries of development while in the west, where individualism and (perhaps just as importantly) space was abundant, pushing the tool away has become the de facto standard. while these…
disarming
let’s talk a little about the army. the american army in particular because that’s the real focus but this applies to most countries, especially in the western world. i am a strong component of demilitarization and pacifism at all costs. but this is not an argument for disarmament in the complete sense of having no military. this is about the point of having an army. armies are extremely expensive both…
writing in east asia
the language frame east asia is home to myriad languages but three are very dominant — chinese, japanese and korean. today we will look at how these languages communicate in writing and how that compares to english. the first thing to note about this is that these languages share certain elements but in many ways are extremely different. chinese and japanese have many things about their writing systems that are…
