Essence of Buzzkill
Avram Grumer finds the Singularity in multibladed razors. A commenter, “Anonymous,” either provides the ultimate deadpan response or just isn’t getting the joke:
More than likely if the curve continues, it will eventually level off asymtotically. Just google “s curve” and you can see what I’m talking about. Examples of problems that Gillete and company might run into that would cause the exponential growth to level off:
1) They hit physical limits that make it cost-prohibitive or just plain impossible to increase the number of blades. Maybe the blades would have to be so thin at some point that they could not be made strong enough?
2) Shaves get “good enough” that consumers don’t see the advantage in paying for the next big upgrade.
I’m thinking that (2) would pretty much kill the exponential growth for good when it happens. However, the physical limits that cause S-curves are often overcome by jumping substrates. As an example, in the computer industry we went from vacuum tubes to transistors, etc.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
March 27, 2006 @ 9:27 am
This is what happens when you let engineers post comments to your blog. For further examples, search for any comment by ”Mr. Obscura” on UO.
Comment by Doug T —
March 27, 2006 @ 9:40 am
”This is what happens when you let engineers post comments to your blog.”
I have fond memories of engineers in the Intro to Philosophy class I took objecting to gedanken-experiments on the basis that there was no possible way to actually carry out the experiments in the real world.
Comment by IOZ —
March 27, 2006 @ 10:29 am
Someone call Stephen Baxter. I imagine his story about an ancient, powerful race of unimaginable razor technology–some kind of infinite series of 2-dimensional space-time-distortion razors, or something like that.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 27, 2006 @ 10:32 am
I think we should call Charlie Baxter. He’d write a story about a sweetly-sad middle-aged barber contemplating what infinite-bladed razors have done to his small midwestern town.
Comment by Barry —
March 27, 2006 @ 10:46 am
This is why sarcasm and parody are so difficult on the internet – because there it’s a toss-up whether a given poster is serious or joking.
Comment by Rob —
March 27, 2006 @ 10:57 am
See, I think the limiting constraint on the number of blades is the storage space needed for the pyramids to sharpen them.
Comment by Avram —
March 27, 2006 @ 11:40 am
But the Singularity will give us access to fractal 4D hyper-pyramids that can sharpen infinite numbers of razor blades down to the Planck level!
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 27, 2006 @ 11:43 am
But the fractal 4-D hypercurse will cause every man, woman and child on the planet to die horribly.
Comment by Francis —
March 27, 2006 @ 12:28 pm
what was in the coffee this morning?
Comment by Jaybird —
March 27, 2006 @ 1:28 pm
As a head (but not face) shaver, allow me to say that I eagerly await the next big thing.
The Mach 3 was a boon for headshaving. It was a quantum leap, if you will. The Fusion is another leap, sadly not of the same magnitude, but certainly in the same ballpark.
I did not know it would be possible to improve upon the shave my Mach 3 gave my scalp. The Fusion did. More importantly than that, it did so and made a razor that was cleaned under a regular stream of water from the bathroom sink.
I’ll buy the 7-bladed razor when it comes out.
I don’t see how they can improve upon the shave the Fusion gives my scalp, however.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
March 27, 2006 @ 4:31 pm
I just read Vernor Vinge’s A Fire in the Sky (or something like that). If infinite bladed razors aren’t possible here, just manufacture them out in the Transcend where the laws of physics are more lenient and ship them back down to us Slow Zoners.
Comment by Steve —
March 27, 2006 @ 6:19 pm
If you asked Bruce Baxter, would you find out if even infinite-bladed razors were enough to shave a really big ape?
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 28, 2006 @ 10:47 pm
”This is why sarcasm and parody are so difficult on the internet – because there it’s a toss-up whether a given poster is serious or joking.”
This is, as it always is, total crap. Writing on the internet is no different than writing English anywhere else. People who are bad at writing sarcasm write as if there’s some magic about ”the internet” that somehow prevents them from writing intelligible sarcasm.
Poor babies.
See?
Comment by Brian C.B. —
March 29, 2006 @ 8:16 am
The three-bladed or four-bladed razor was a very early, very convincing, Saturday Night Live spoof commercial. Tagline? ”Three Blades: Because You’ll Believe Anything.”
Also, an Australian or Canadian spoof on the multi-blades suggested that Blades 12 and 13 were there to create a distraction that allowed bladed 14 and fifteen to sneak up on the whisker unobserved.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 29, 2006 @ 8:23 am
Heh. It’s all funny stuff. AND YET, Jaybird, no. 10, wins the thread, not just for himself but for the razor industry.
Pingback by Sweet Redemption § Unqualified Offerings —
March 29, 2006 @ 8:27 am
[...] me, for the razor industry. Downblog, amid a lot of spoofing about infinite-bladed razors, Jaybird pipes up: As a head (but not face) shaver, allow me to say that [...]
Comment by wade —
March 29, 2006 @ 8:30 am
I’m still working on, and expect to become incredibly wealthy, when i finally perfect my universal shaving putty.