A change in tone

[Stuart Ackerman]

Yup...he told us all to beat it !!! :D

[Cujobob]

Any time a forum has debates, drama will occur. What nobody should want is for everyone to have the same opinion. How boring it would be if we all agreed with one another all the time.

I appreciate those who post pictures and talk about how much they love whatever knife they own. I appreciate those who discuss sharpening techniques, metallurgy, and even debate these things heavily. I also appreciate the people who ask questions and just want to figure something out relating to their own knife issue. One can appreciate all of the different types of personalities and situations that occur on the forum if they so choose.

[shunsui]

"I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own."
Jackson Pollock

Blerv, get yourself off the ground, dust yourself off, and get back in the saddle. :D

[jumbo]

Are you by any chance the same "Jumbo" that contributes on Mr. Stamp's forum?... And how's the weather in Canada by the way?

As the official spokesman for all of Canada (until Mike's turn next week): the weather is great, my friend! Cliff hollered over the fence there was some grumbling online I should issue a statement on. (Aside: we proudly invite you all to visit our World Wonder, the "Great Fence of Canada", it stretches 2500 miles from Newfoundland to Alberta). We Canadians stick together, dontchaknow.

I comment on Cliff's forum even less than I do here, because I end up writing inane stuff like the above. Indeed, I simply flagged the posts I thought were unbecoming. Like everybody else, among other things, I just like knives.

[MichaelScott]

I have read through this thread and as a newcomer to the forum would like to offer a few comments.

As I mentioned in my introduction, I spent a couple of years as a moderator on a gun forum. You think this place gets contentious? It is nothing like gun forums. This is, with a few exceptions, a rather courteous place. Where I see problems arising is in the same areas as we used to see them on my gun forum, namely, not sticking to the topic and making assumptions that lead to personal and rude behavior.

Basically, there is no excuse to get personally insulting or malicious in a forum. Discussions on a topic can be "passionate" and sometimes blunt. Disagreement over substantive issues or features is a good thing as they highlight aspects that might not otherwise come to light. Often, no one is right or wrong. Often, disagreements are matters of personal opinion and if recongnized and respected, need not degenerate into the abyss of flame wars.

If someone feels the need to address personal issues with another member, I would suggest using the private message format and not airing grievances in public. I'd certainly rather not have to see them.

[Cliff Stamp]

I comment on Cliff's forum even less than I do here...

Now you have revealed it. As you post on my forum, according to the above, you do so because of an infatuation you have with me, not the actual discussion. I manipulate this infatuation to create a conspiracy to promote a secret agenda such as steels which are designed for cutting tools actually work well for cutting tools and that we can learn about steels from applying metallurgy. This conspiracy doesn't work very well if you go telling people about it.

[Donut]

I think it is pretty obvious that FCM stands for Fan of Cliff's Mumblings. :)

[jumbo]

This conspiracy doesn't work very well if you go telling people about it.

Well, shoot.

It's so embarrassing to have my cover blown. I just have to confess, I have a similar admiration for Sal, which is similarly unjustified. It has nothing to do with the fact he makes great knives and knows how to deal with customers.

And I will totally stand behind everything both of you ever say or do, even if it makes no sense. Tee-hee, that's just how I roll.

[akaAK]

I guess it takes an adult to sometimes let things go. The point of this entire thread lost on the people who constantly try to prove how smart they are.

Maybe FCM isn't getting his point across as effectively as he would like but I get the impression that there is an underlying agenda being promoted to the detriment of this forum. Paranoia, conspiracy call it what you want, you may be right I can accept that, wouldn't be the first time I was wrong, unfortunately won't be the last either.

My contributions are insignificant compared to others on here but I have found myself less an less interested in this forum as time goes on. To see some of the people walking away from this forum doesn't make this a better place.

[Surfingringo]

I comment on Cliff's forum even less than I do here...

Now you have revealed it. As you post on my forum, according to the above, you do so because of an infatuation you have with me, not the actual discussion. I manipulate this infatuation to create a conspiracy to promote a secret agenda such as steels which are designed for cutting tools actually work well for cutting tools and that we can learn about steels from applying metallurgy. This conspiracy doesn't work very well if you go telling people about it.

Through length of beard or dye color?

[jumbo]

I guess it takes an adult to sometimes let things go. The point of this entire thread lost on the people who constantly try to prove how smart they are.

Maybe FCM isn't getting his point across as effectively as he would like but I get the impression that there is an underlying agenda being promoted to the detriment of this forum. Paranoia, conspiracy call it what you want, you may be right I can accept that, wouldn't be the first time I was wrong, unfortunately won't be the last either.

My contributions are insignificant compared to others on here but I have found myself less an less interested in this forum as time goes on. To see some of the people walking away from this forum doesn't make this a better place.

That's true, I'm being very childish. This conspiracy is serious business and can't be treated lightly. Cliff has received a non-confidence vote from senior forum members. To be clear: this means people on the internet who spend a lot of time chatting about shiny things (or sometimes, less shiny) that cut fruit. I hope he, and his subversive band of followers, including me, are punished to the full extent of the law. The underlying agenda and goals of his are so destructive, so dangerous... I mean after all it's all about... it's about something, it just has to be, something so awful, one shouldn't even mention what it is.

[Cliff Stamp]

Through length of beard or dye color?

Ug, if I didn't come from a line of fisherman and am fairly biased to like/respect people who do that, well the suggestion that I dye my beard is almost a killing insult (Canada style - you are likely to not get your coffee refilled).

[Cliff Stamp]

I mean after all it's all about... it's about something, it just has to be, something so awful, one shouldn't even mention what it is.

The first rule of Fight Club ...

As an aside, the idea that there is a vast conspiracy / agenda about the physical properties of materials which you can just look up in any number of peer reviewed works is really absurd. I can understand on some level how people can at least run with the idea that the Moon landing is a conspiracy. It is a big idea, it is interesting to many people, there are movies about it with cool people and it isn't completely trivial to actually know if it happened. It isn't like you can go and visit the moon yourself or trivially view the empirical evidence. But with steels, the fact that people think there is a conspiracy to promote the idea that AEB-L has 3-5% chromium carbides is just odd. Anyone could just find that out by taking a piece of it and just getting the materials data, it would cost you $50 to know. Plus with a few hours of education (starting from high school) you could look at phase diagrams and see / estimate the carbide fractions. This is all actually used in application, the idea that it is all some kind of cover up on basic ideas is just kind of odd.

I can understand again how people go looking for Bigfoot. It is just a fun sort of idea and a kooky thing to think there are some kind of ape men wandering around in the woods. But to think there are conspiracies and agendas behind discussions about physical properties of steels and sharpened wedges, which again you can just look up the data on (and verify it when references are provided) is just really odd. What is the conspiracy exactly? Is Skynet trying to stop John Connor because he uses a Military to kill a T-9000 protecting the core neural network and to prevent that they have sent "agents" back in time to disrupt on line forums to get the Military discontinued so John Connor has to use a Benchmade, which of course fails horribly and it dooms mankind? Really - that is the response to "The data sheet doesn't show toughness as a function of hardness, it shows it as a function of austenization temperature which is effecting the micro-structure and the type of martensite which is forming." .

[sal]

I'd like to welcome the new folks to our forum. I did see a few, but didn't write you down, my apologies. Hope you enjoy your time here and try to see this and other threads here with a view from a heigth.

Actually I'm impressed that this discussion is still a discussion. Proud of you actually. Especially when compard to other forums. Some inuendo's and slant digs, but no SCREAMING. That in itself is an achievement. :)

I really don't care what forums others maybe part of and crossing forums with links is not a problem either. It seems that there is a thinking that this is a competition and there are teams that come to support a particular team. Erase that view. Majority doesn't make right. Nor does repetition. We try to learn from each other. We don't have to always agree. That's fine. We're all knife afi's, so we're all already red headed step children by genetics. I've often said that trying to work with a group of knifemakers is like herding cats.

Jim likes to try it out for himself. Empirical evaluations. Also a good tool. I learn from him too. I think he should be more open and control his emotions, but that doesn't make him bad, or worthy of negative thought. Let he who is without sin... ****, I've even seen Killer get defensive, and he's about as steady as anyone I've ever met.

This forum is about as close to a large family seminar as I've seen. As many of you have mentioned, with this many people trying to always be perfect is not likely. Cliff offers much to the forum. I believe that he believes too strongly in science as a religious person mught put too much faith in their God. In my many years, I have seen science make mistakes, and I sometimes even question God. That's ok. It's still a good tool. Science would define our forum as a bunch of odd sized nuts in a washing machine. :p Proving absolute truth as difficult. And frankly, I'm not convinced that anyone can.

Perhaps we can try harder, as some have suggested to appreciate the offerings, be more tolerant of the differences. We have some very bright people here and we can learn from all of us. We are all teachers and we are all students.

When one is perceived that they ar being attacked, for whatever reason, it's very difficult not to be defensive. A lesson all of us can grow from. "Cliff, you and Brunzenstein are finding fault with my sharpener. You're stupid and don't know nuthin' and besides..."

Kristi and I haven't closed the thread because much thought has been shared, which is a good thing. I see quite a few offering good advice and trying to pull it up.

sal

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We are but tiny drops of life stuck on the side of a round rock whirling through space, now what did you say was important?

[Holland]

Amen.

Well said Sal

[Johnnie1801]

Great post Sal!

Now about that Sharpmaker....:p

[Cliff Stamp]

I believe that he believes too strongly in science ....

Sal, I don't believe in science any more than I believe in music. Science by definition is the process by which you can know something through observation and rational discourse and the knowledge that is gained from it, it is both the verb and the noun. It doesn't mean you can't know without science, there are other ways of knowing such as philosophy and mathematics.

Of course science generates false conclusions, I am sure at some time in your life you have told a lie, does that mean no one should ever believe what you have said? Of course you are supposed to be skeptical of all scientific claims, if you are not then you have abandoned science because the most fundamental thing of science is to always ask "could you be wrong?".

Imagine someone coming into this forum and making this statement :

"Hey, I bought a Military and I noticed that the liner lock was deformed, this has never happened to my Benchmade! How come Spyderco doesn't use proper liners and uses cheap material for the locks on expensive folders!"

Now this is an observation, it is a conclusion. However there are other ways to explain the observation and even if it was true in that one case then it would not be true in general. The method of science then says that conclusion should be rejected. However even being right isn't enough for something to be science. If this seems odd imagine someone making this statement :

"Hey, I got a new 440C Military, I put the knife in water and it sank. This is a great I love stainless steel knives!"

Now he is right that 440C is stainless, but the conclusion is not science because in general if you test materials for being stainless by seeing if they float it won't lead to true conclusions. This is again what science does, it is a process of generating true conclusions from observations and rational discourse. However, and this is the critical part, to be really specific it doesn't generate true conclusions, it has the goal of converging to them. It is evolutionary, it is iterative, it moves towards being true, it never actually fully gets there.

At one point we thought that things fell to the ground because they belonged there. At some point we thought they fell because all things have a property called mass and all mass attract mass. A further time later we thought that the reasons things fall is because all matter actually distorts space and objects just travel so as to minimize energy (like why a ball rolls down hill, mass warps space to create hills we can't see). Now we know that this isn't absolutely true because it produces singularities, points at which we don't know anything. Hence we are looking for a way to unify theories of scale from the very small to the very large.

However until we get there we use what we know which is why we can make planes fly. We don't just sit there and say "Well we might be wrong and so we can't know that planes will fly." We use what we know and build the plane. And then we go back to trying to figure out how to build a transporter.

[Liquid Cobra]

[nirvanero]

I haven't read the whole thread (...) but it seems some people shared interesting thoughts. All I can say this is just a forum and a nice one indeed (the only one that I frequently follow). It's not perfect but how could become a forum perfect? Especially when we are talking about a forum full of OCD people... :D People have their own oppinions and characters. I've been here since 2010 after years of "lurking" and I've seen many people coming here after me and becoming knife experts in a twelve months (or pretending to), people who like to argue about everything and people who just try to have fun. It's true I've seen a change in tone in the last year or so and I miss some people's posts, but that's life. Now I post once in a while between uploading pics but I always find time to read some interesting posts. I hope that this remains so in the future too.

[Ankerson]

Jim likes to try it out for himself. Empirical evaluations. Also a good tool. I learn from him too. I think he should be more open and control his emotions, but that doesn't make him bad, or worthy of negative thought. Let he who is without sin... ****, I've even seen Killer get defensive, and he's about as steady as anyone I've ever met.


sal

Hi Sal,

Yes, nobody is perfect and we all have much to learn in the end.

Jim