having left the pre-socratics, we come to the obvious next step — socrates. you probably already know three things about socrates. he was an ancient greek philosopher. he had an awesome beard. he was sentenced to death for his philosophy by drinking hemlock. while those are a good start, i… Read More »socrates (history of philosophy 2)

history, as we know, isn’t true. it’s just the most popular opinion about what happened in the past. it’s not what actually happened. nobody knows what happened. but it’s a reasonable estimate and that’s close enough. philosophy is a subject with a history nearly as old as human writing. before… Read More »in the beginning (history of philosophy 1)

while i’m on the subject of frequent woodworking questions, the first one that always comes to mind is this. i’ll give you a little background. if you’ve ever used a jointer (and you’ve probably used a jointer if you’re reading woodworking articles online), you know the infeed and outfeed tables… Read More »just plane flat?

about thirty years ago, i saw a trick for the first time to make flattening the back of a plane iron far easier if it was badly out of flat — take a thin coin and put it under the iron, tilting the back just a little off the surface… Read More »underwear for your tools?

the cookies are pretty sweet, though. literally. you know, sugar. anyway, guides have a bad reputation and aesthetic reception in western woodworking. people have spent hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years talking about how it’s cheating to use a guide. and that is pure bullshit so i figure it’s probably time… Read More »guides aren’t just for cookies

the most important skill you will ever learn as a human is pattern-recognition. it’s what you’ll spend your entire life doing whether it’s speaking and hearing language or doing academic tasks or sorting objects in your kitchen. everything we do as humans is based on the application of pattern-recognition. it’s… Read More »in search of patterns