This Knife Might Not Work Once

This Northwest Trail knife is built wrong. Clipped into your pocket, when you take it out, you have to flip it around before you can open it. You get what you pay for.

My neighborhood Walmart is my pharmacy and I enjoy walking the store while waiting for my presscription. The abundance of stuff speaks to our deep, broad, and wide prosperty, a direct consequence of the market economy. Free markets = free minds. Usually, as much as I like looking, I seldom buy. However, over the years, working in physical security and serving in the Texas Military Department, I have bought extra gear. I learned that lesson from a classmate in criminology. She looked into the trunk of my car and said, "You only have stuff for yourself. I always carry extra." 

And you can always use an extra knife. I never leave home without at least one knife and at least one way to make a fire. That was a lesson from a team-building exercise when I worked for Coin World. We had a series of monthly Monday morning meetings to get to know each other in order to improve our quality of worklife. There were about 40 of us from Coin World, Linn's, Scott's, the press operators, and pre-press at about six or eight tables. The last exercise was a survival scenario.

You are coming home from a vacation in South America with the team mates at your table. Your plane hits a storm and you go down. You crash land. The pilot is killed. The plane is unflyable. The radio does not work. You are all mostly all right. You have to come out together. This is an inventory of what you all packed on your vacation. Golf clubs... a bottle of rum... a .38-cal handgun with six bullets... a Christmas candle... and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember. Not everyone got out. One team gave up right away and decided to settle in place for the rest of their lives. The one press operator on our team said that she was going out on her own. I said that in real life I would join her and leave them behind, but we all have to come out togther, that's the rules. I told my team mates to leave the gun and the rum or not everyone is going to make it. They ignored that. One guy said to bring the gun so that we could fire it into the air to attract natives who would help us. I thought that was a bad idea on several levels. He asked why I wanted the Christmas candle. I replied, "To help make a fire." He said that we are in a jungle and can build a fire anytime. He said to bring the golf clubs. "Whatever for?" I asked. "To make a stretcher and carry someone who is wounded or to kill small game." The others saw the wisdom in both of those plans. You see, this guy was obviously the de facto leader, well known and well liked. It went on for about 45 minutes. Then they gave us the answer from the back of the book.

According to the Army Rangers, you stay with the plane for 72 hours. Someone knows you are missing. They will come looking for you. The plane is unflyable. If you hear help coming you can set it on fire as a signal. In any case, after 72 hours, set it on fire anyway and head out. Find a stream and follow it downhill. Somewhere near the water's edge, probably at the mouth of the river, you will find a village. Whatever you took, you always need a knife and a way to make fire.

Since that day in AD 2000, I never leave home without at least one knife and at least one way to make a fire. 

How many knives do you need? How many can you carry? As the public affairs officer for the Maritime Regiment of the Texas State Guard, I went out with our dive team several times. One time on shore, one of the divers was fussing with some line and needed to cut his knife free. He reached around left and right and went for the leg he was sitting on and then tried to lean over his tanks to grab his pack. I handed him one of mine. His unit leader saw that. "Don't you always have three knives?" he barked. "Well, yeah, but this one is tied up and ... " His leader shook his head and walked away. 

I do not know what I will do with the Northwest Trails knife. I won't toss it out, but I cannot have it for an everyday carry. My Victorinox is my EDC. When I retired from the TXSG, I stopped carrying the Benchmade that I always clipped to the right pocket of my ACUs. The Benchmade works the way a knife is supposed to. I still need a replacement for civilian life. (See, also Gibbs's Rule #9 from NCIS.) You can always use an extra knife; and in the worst case, it only has to work once.

When I was learning to fly, I was coming in a bit low, and the instructor pushed the yoke forward for a little more airspeed and lift. When we were done, he asked, "What you have done if you had come down in the bean field at the end of the runway?" I replied, "Stay with the plane 72 hours, then set it on fire and walk in to the terminal." 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Genius of Design

Objectified

Documentation is Specification

Leadership

Nerd Nation

The jocks have been shoved aside.  While the Super Bowl has not withered from disinterest,  the fact remains that a significant (if unmeasured) population of  America know themselves to be geeks or nerds --  and are proud of it. 

Big Bang Theory:
Wolowicz, Leonard, Penny, Sheldon and Raj

 I  point to mainstream television programs such as CSI, NCIS, Big Bang Theory, NUMB3RS, and Psych, as well as to the foundation media such as NPR's "Science Friday" (1.3 million listeners), and the long established commercial success of the Discovery Channel and the recently rebranded Syfy ("SciFi") Channel.   It is not just that Big Bang Theory is a prime time television comedy about physicists.  To that must be added Big Blog Theory, the website that offers real physics in support of the comedy.  This is in the instant tradition of the Wolfram Mathematica pages to supplement NUMB3RS when it was on the air, 2005-2010.  On an NCIS episode, laboratory technician Abby Sciuto is waxing on about Bill Nye, the Science Guy.  Her boss, former Marine sniper Jethro Gibbs, does not get the reference.  She goes on.  "Oh," he says, "Just like Mr. Wizard."  She replies with a question mark. 


When Hugo Gernsback launched his science fiction magazines, he intended that they be for everyone.  Still, he insisted that his writers pad their stories with expositions from textbooks, to ensure that the science (however fanciful) was credible.  When John W. Campbell took over, he identified his audience specifically as educated in science, and he courted writers such as Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov because of their education. 

At least one good reason to take any science class.

 Fully 28% of Americans claim to have four-year degrees.  In a funny way, the show NUMB3RS reflects that.  While David Krumholtz learned his lines well, his supporting actress, Navi Rawat (Dr. Amita Ramanujan) says that she surfed the web to read popular math to help her delivery.  Beyond that, co-star Judd Hirsch actually majored in physics.  Even closer to the limit, supporting actor Dylan Bruno (Agent Colby Granger) has a bachelor's from MIT in environmental engineering.  Pauley Perrette (Abbey Sciuto of NCIS)'s degree in sociology exposed her to the related study of criminology.

Cellphones and computers have morphed into smartphones and pads.  Clearly, comedy and drama consonant with our culture must reflect that.


Also reflected in that broader culture, is the "CSI Effect" in real courtrooms.  At first, it was a complaint from prosecutors.  Lacking physical evidence, some found it hard to win a conviction.  Or so they claimed.  The problem interested criminologist Gregg Barak of Eastern Michigan University who specializes in the mass media affects on our perceptions of crime.  He enlisted his colleagues Young Kim and Donald Shelton.  They found, broadly, that in fact, the "CSI Effect" is really just a "tech effect."  We expect scientifically valid physical evidence because we live in a technological culture.  Beyond that, however, their numbers showed that jurors with less education demand more evidence.  Jurors with more education tend to take the prosecution's word for it.  Whether this correlates to time spent watching television, or solidarity within social classes is a different question. 

Also on Necessary Facts
Nerd Nation 2.0 (Danika McKellar, Felicia Day, and Natalie Portman)
Nerd Nation 3.0 (Dungeons and Dragons) 
Nerd Nation 4.0 (Gentleman's Quarterly)
Nerd Nation 4.5 (Mayim Bialik)
Where All the Children are Above Average