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Mathematicians Are Hoarding a Type of Japanese Chalk

244 points by curtis 11y ago

nosuchthing 11y ago
Price history is interesting [1], I'll take a guess that information of Hagoromo discontinuing this product went viral in January. [1] http://camelcamelcamel.com/Hagoromo-Fulltouch-White-Chalk-72pcs/product/B007R76ND2?context=browse http://camelcamelcamel.com/Hagoromo-Fulltouch-White-Chalk-72...
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Oh my goodness what a wonderful site. I wanted to make something like this years ago and even registered a domain (buyitwhen.com) but everyone I explained the idea to just laughed at me and I didn't really know how to get started on it. Who's laughing now? Well mostly the people who are monetizing this thing but I am laughing along with them in an I-knew-it-would-work fashion. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
ot 11y ago
In case anyone's wondering what the formula on the blackboard is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper's_self-referential_formula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper's_self-referential_form...
fsk 11y ago
The reason you have problems with markers is that, when a marker is out of ink, people put it back on the whiteboard instead of throwing it in the trash.
- moultano 11y ago
  That's a strange phenomena. People don't seem to think of whiteboard markers as disposable things. If one isn't writing they think it either needs to be fixed, or that they aren't using it correctly and it might resume writing later. I've tried to fight this by ostentatiously throwing them immediately in the trash the first time they stop writing, and it seems to be catching. I don't encounter nearly as many empty ones as I used to.
  - untog 11y ago
    The problem is likely that there aren't spares available. For some reason companies are notorious for locking up whiteboard pens and only giving new ones when you've signed some obscure form in triplicate.
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      I feel irrationally responsible. I used to steal them out of the stationary cupboard in high school during the 1980s and give them away to anyone who wanted some, and was surprised at how popular they were with other students. At the time I thought that either everyone else liked art class as much as I did, or that perhaps some of them were using them for graffiti, but some years later it dawned on me that they provided a relatively safe way to abuse solvents :-.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    > People don't seem to think of whiteboard markers as disposable things. // Perhaps that's because they're usually refillable - the writing tip lasts much longer than the ink supply.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Just need a small green bin with the "chasing arrow" logo marked "marker recycling." Then at night the custodians will just tip it into the trash as they do with most recycling containers now.
- freework 11y ago
  Usually when a marker "runs out" it just has all the ink drained to the back of the pen. If you hold the pen with the tip facing down, it'll drain the ink back to the tip and it will write again.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    Considering the fact that most whiteboards are installed vertically and that writing involves the tip being at a higher elevation than the back of the pen, this doesn't seem very sustainable. Yet another reason to prefer blackboards.
kqr2 11y ago
OT, however, this made me think of Brandon Sanderson's book The Rithmatist where chalk and its formulation is an integral part of magic. http://smile.amazon.com/Rithmatist-Brandon-Sanderson-ebook/dp/B00AJGNICW/ http://smile.amazon.com/Rithmatist-Brandon-Sanderson-ebook/d...
GuiA 11y ago
I grew up writing on blackboards, so obviously this is purely my subjective preference, but I also find blackboards much better to think on than whiteboards. One thing I particularly don't like is that I tend to write quite fast; the faster you write, the more likely it is that a marker will leave a thin, washed out, barely legible stroke, whereas chalk is always nice and clear. I also tend to leave things up on my board for a few days, after which a lot of dry erase markers become a pain to erase, whereas chalk always erases nicely. I have a whiteboard in my office, but if I could get it switched out with a blackboard without bothering my nice office manager who already has way too much work to be bothered by my weird requests, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  I like whiteboards a lot more now that I've discovered the joy of fine-tipped whiteboard markers.
- reneherse 11y ago
  I recently discovered that common alcohol-based hand sanitizer works very well to remove stubborn white board marker. Not sure if it just works on my particular brand of markers or if the solvent is more universal, but give it a try.
  - innguest 11y ago
    Hand sanitizer will usually have moisturizer. It's better to use isopropyl alcohol as close to 100% as possible.
  - greggman 11y ago
    I've found that drawing over the mark with a white board marker seems to make it removable.
    - namplaa 11y ago
      I've found that it also works for permanent marker.
ryanobjc 11y ago
Someone pointed out that it's really hard to erase white boards. While it's trivial to erase a blackboard. Better for top secret stuff.
- innguest 11y ago
  Point them to this helpful link. :) http://rumkin.com/reference/whiteboard/index.php http://rumkin.com/reference/whiteboard/index.php
quasiresearcher 11y ago
I remember a discussion about this on MathOverlow http://mathoverflow.net/questions/26267/where-to-buy-premium-white-chalk-in-the-u-s-like-they-have-at-rims http://mathoverflow.net/questions/26267/where-to-buy-premium...
- monochromatic 11y ago
  I remember that being linked from this article.
jipumarino 11y ago
I taught with blackboard and chalk at a university and then at a high school for 9 years. I'm allergic and hated the chalk with a burning passion.
nwhitehead 11y ago
In my mind the real tragedy is blackboards. Almost nowhere has good blackboards anymore except for math departments in older universities that stubbornly refuse to replace their old boards. Since the 1970s everything has been replaced with inferior materials.
- scott_karana 11y ago
  What makes for a good blackboard? Could they be reproduced?
  - nwhitehead 11y ago
    The old good ones are heavy, dark, and silky smooth. The new ones are lighter, noisier, have more friction, and erasing leaves more of a mess (in my opinion). Reading online people say that the old slate ones were harder to erase and had glare problems. I agree with the glare, the old style boards do show glare from sunlight coming in from side windows which is annoying.
gsam 11y ago
While I grew up with mostly whiteboards, there's just something magical about blackboards. Disregarding my disgust for screeching on a blackboard, mathematics on a chalkboard seems so natural. Where I study they've been constantly removing blackboards and even whiteboards. Now we're left with dozens of terrible document cameras, which nobody can be enthusiastic about.
- bryondowd 11y ago
  How is this the only post that mentions the chalkboard screeching? That noise was the bane of my existence in school. Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it than most, but it would make my skin crawl for the rest of the class, and if there were someone inexperienced using the board and producing considerable squeals, I couldn't focus on anything and had to restrain myself from just getting up and leaving the room. If for no other reason, this makes whiteboards a godsend.
hkmurakami 11y ago
I remember news of the demise of the company hitting Japanese media outlets a couple of months ago. Here are some tidbits from that article that weren't covered by the Gizmodo piece: - A group of American mathematicians reportedly purchased 1 metric ton of the chalk. - Hagoromo was a technologically pioneering company, with things like (1) innovations in a greener manufacturing process for chalk, (2) chalk that can write on a wet blackboard surface, and (3) colored chalk that could be discerned by people who are color blind. - The company is shutting down not because of revenue problems, but because of the ailing health of the President and lack of a successor. Iirc the current president is the 3rd head of the company in its history.
- MichaelCrawford 11y ago
  "Lack of a successor". This is a very common problem these days; during the winter I bought a sweater at a Portland outdoor gear shop after searching all over creation for real wool clothing as it was a bitterly cold winter. The owner told me that he could not find someone to buy his store as everyone shops online these days. When he retires he's just going to shut it down.
  - jotm 11y ago
    Can't he hire someone who would go online?
beloch 11y ago
Another evil of whiteboard markers is that they dry out. Leaving them open hastens their demise. This is especially noticeable right at the end of their lives when capping them in between periods of drawing and switching between several dying markers can get you through a talk. Chalk is not entirely without treachery itself. The common North American breed is thinner and prone to snapping if you press too hard. If you don't bring your own with you, you're likely to have to make do with one of the tiny stubs that have been left behind. It's also pretty common to run into chalk brushes that contain more chalk than your chalk box.
blt 11y ago
Watch video lectures from MIT, they know what's up. 9 blackboards sliding on vertical rails. The lecturer doesn't have to waste time erasing boards, and the history stays up for a long time in case students fall behind on their notes.
- ptaipale 11y ago
  Umm, wasn't something like this a standard thing already long ago? I gave the exercise lessons for programming courses at TKK (now Aalto University) over 25 years ago, and in the bigger lecture halls, we had a system where there were four or five blackboards rotating up/down with an electric control. So you'd fill one blackboard, and then push a button, and the used up blackboard would lift up, remain visible, and you'd go on with the next blackboard. The system looked like it had been in use since the 1960's when the campus was built.
- mavhc 11y ago
  Ah yes, pre Gutenberg teaching, the lecture version of 100 monks making copies of your work
  - tfgg 11y ago
    You know what? Those lectures were the ones I remember 10x better than the ones with printed handouts and powerpoint slides.
    - mavhc 11y ago
      Well, the Gutenberg Method of teaching suggests that instead of just reading handouts in the lecture you read them beforehand and do the problem solving in the lecture time, when you have the experts available to help when you find out you actually don't understand. http://entropysite.oxy.edu/morrison.html http://entropysite.oxy.edu/morrison.html
      - tfgg 11y ago
        Ok, but I'd tend to call those "classes" or "supervisions"/"tutorials" if in small groups. That essay seems to focus on how copying from the blackboard can go wrong, without covering the experience since 1986 of how powerpoint and handouts go even more wrong. This isn't to say I totally disagree. I didn't bother with many lectures in undergrad, and most of my learning happened in classes/supervisions, which I guess are equivalent to what that guy calls the "Gutenberg method". It's just that I found when the lecture was copying from a blackboard, it tended to be worthwhile going - especially since it forces a slower pace and forces you to read the material exactly.
alister 11y ago
All sorts of high-quality stationery are becoming impossible to find. I used to love poking around real stationery stores as a kid. Today's "warehouse" stores are a lot less fun that a real stationer. For people who don't know, a real stationer would have 10x the number of SKUs that Staples and Office Depot carry. - Elastic bands from almost any store today are now a synthetic beige or grayish-tan material that is much less springy than pure rubber, and it rots leaving a sticky residue in less than a year. A real stationer used to have dozens of shapes and sizes of elastics, not 3 or 4 choices you have now. - A high quality manual stapler is really hard to find. I haven't found any equal to my Apsco 2002 stapler which is no longer made. Everything I tried jams more often. - If you want to put an envelope snugly inside a slightly larger envelope -- for example, to enclose a reply envelope -- good luck finding that in any brick-and-mortar store today. You'll have to order it. Those huge arts and crafts stores like Michaels do have an overlap with what a real stationer used to be, but it's not a superset. I've noticed some differences by country too: Compared to the US, good quality stationery is very hard to find in Brazil (even in rich neighborhoods)[1]. Generally in brick-and-mortar stores in Western Europe, you find high-quality stationery more easily than in the US warehouse stores. I've never been to Japan, so I'm curious to know what it's like there. [1] http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Items_more_expensive_and_less_expensive_in_Brazil http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Items_more_expensive_...
- Elepsis 11y ago
  I came back from my last trip to Japan with more than $50 in pens and notebooks, so in a nutshell: the Japanese stationery market is amazing, and even a 7-11 on any random street corner will have a better and dramatically higher quality stationery selection than most big box stores in the US.
- lips 11y ago
  > - A high quality manual stapler is really hard to find. I haven't found any equal to my Apsco 2002 stapler which is no longer made. Everything I tried jams more often. Luckily, the dimensions of a standard staple haven't change in 50+ years, so you can purchase a beautiful used old Ace Pilot for under $15 - http://munk.org/typecast/2014/05/21/stapler-of-the-week-1938-ace-pilot-model-404/ http://munk.org/typecast/2014/05/21/stapler-of-the-week-1938... (Or just get a new-used Apsco 2002 on ebay..) But I agree. We (?) have a tendency to turn iteratively refined utilitarian items into commodities, and in the process, lose the subtle design aspects that made them remarkable in the first place.
facepalm 11y ago
"there’s no way to tell when a marker is running low" Hm, maybe that's a problem that can be solved and earn the inventor good money?
- benplumley 11y ago
  For a product that's disposable, I doubt any such system could justify its cost.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    http://i.imgur.com/UDAZQUI.jpg http://i.imgur.com/UDAZQUI.jpg Depends on the cost to implement and the margin you can charge over competitors I guess.
    - Symbiote 11y ago
      The whiteboard pens we have at work have a semi-transparent barrel: http://www.postofficeshop.co.uk/images/product/extraLarge/2/D8348_L.jpg http://www.postofficeshop.co.uk/images/product/extraLarge/2/...
tenfingers 11y ago
Blackboards are better, but the argument about superior chalk is pretty dumb. I had/used everything from blackboards to digital whiteboards. I still like blackboards better, but it's only going to last as long as digital displays improve. Blackboards lasts forever. Whiteboards, especially the cheap ones, inevitably start to have stains that you cannot clean without some solvent. Blackboards work with any chalk, essentially. You have to be careful about whiteboard markers, because many stink to oblivion (I get asthma out of them), and many others don't erase properly. One of the best markers I tried are the water-based made from Edding, but they're harder to clean, and you have to clean within a couple of hours in order to be able to clean at all. Chalk, on the other hand, lasts forever and can always be cleaned. If you want a perfect blackboard, just use a damp cloth. There's this illusion that whiteboards are cleaner. Actually, they're not. Whiteboard "dry" markers work by depositing a fine powder on the surface. It's initially suspended in a liquid, and then sticks on the whiteboard "ideally" only due to electrostatic tension. Dry marker powder is often toxic, the suspension liquid is often toxic (especially when you breathe it), and the powder sticks fucng everywhere. If you're careful when erasing, a blackboard can be kept very clean. I have one in the kitchen. The markers are expensive. Especially when you want the good, water-based ones. I often have to order those. Chalk is inexpensive, I can buy it anywhere. Why the hell are we using whiteboards?? I built several whiteboards myself. They suck. The best approach to a whiteboard is buying a piece of glass the size you want, and gluing a piece of white adhesive plastic on the back side. Dry marker on the glass always cleans. You might get stains if you leave the marker for days, but they come off easily, with just water. Now what.. digital whiteboards. It's a love-hate relationship. They're completely clean, which is what I like about them, but there are many downsides too. You need power, which means that you need to switch the screen off. A white/blackboard on the other hand shows you stuff all the time. The screen is large, but the pixels are too large. The DPI, at close distance, is ridiculous. They're also too bright when seen at close distance. There's glare. The "pens" suck. But if you did the same with some e-ink technology, I would switch to digital whiteboards instantly, as it would solve all these problems at once. It looks like a dream application where the price of the display wouldn't matter much (ardesia costs a fortune nowdays anyway). I had to use at some point an Epson projector which had some whiteboard capability on it. The pen had an infrared sensor/reflector on top, which meant that you had to hold the pen without making a shadow between the projector and the pen. Who's the idiot that thought this would work??
MichaelCrawford 11y ago
I personally cannot fathom why anyone at all uses whiteboards. When I was at Caltech, we called our Physical Chemistry prof "Wild Bill Goddard" because he wore a cowboy hat and boots to his lectures. His course was largely conceptual, illustrated with balloon-shaped drawings of electron orbitals, drawn with 3-D projection in which the yellow and red were in the plane of the chalkboard while the pale blue projected in and out. We all complained that we could not see the blue diagrams. "That's OK, you're not supposed to, that's why I use pale blue." On night Sonja Benson and I snuck into the classroom to put the arm on his blue chalk. We took it down into the steam tunnels where she doused it with her hairspray, giving it a hard coating so it would not mark the board anymore. The very instant Wild Bill saw what we had done, he cracked his blue stick in half then continued drawing orbital diagrams we were not meant to see.
- dasmoth 11y ago
  One reason to prefer whiteboards: I find the feeling of touching chalk unbearable.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    There's also the occasional teeth-curling screech when a fingernail or little bit of hard matter in the chalk scratches the board. Even at that though, I think I prefer chalkboards.
    - apricot 11y ago
      I teach math, and just as some people cannot taste the bitterness in Brussels sprouts, I'm not affected by the fingernail-on-blackboard noise. I find it very useful for taming a class of wild freshmen, though. I only have to do it once. "It finds the correct delta or else it gets the noise again."
- mrgoldenbrown 11y ago
  Why did you need to take the chalk into the steam tunnels just to spray it?
- 11y ago
NoGravitas 11y ago
The solution to your whiteboard woes: don't use dry-erase markers. Use washable crayons (as sold for small children). You'll never be surprised by an empty marker again. They take a damp cloth to wipe off, but they wipe off completely, regardless of how long they've been on the board.
- Pxtl 11y ago
  My experience is they don't wash as well as dry-erase markers. Propbably the best approach is just to carry two sets of dry-erase markers everywhere, one always sealed.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  Thanks, I will try this.
tel 11y ago
I don't know the reason, but I feel nearly intellectually crippled since losing access to the multitudes of blackboards available on college campuses. White boards do not even approach the utility of blackboards for me. People in this thread have suggested fine tipped markers and washable crayons—I will try them both!—but I truly feel I will simply not be able to recover the efficiency and value of a blackboard any time soon.
octatoan 11y ago
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/26267/where-to-buy-premium-white-chalk-in-the-u-s-like-they-have-at-rims https://mathoverflow.net/questions/26267/where-to-buy-premiu...
deerpig 11y ago
I have two large blackboards in my own office in Phnom Penh. I couldn't live without them. There is a shop that makes them out of wood. They aren't nearly as nice as a proper ceramic coated steel chalkboard (they still make these in china -- look it up on alibaba) but wood still does the job. The only problem is that it's difficult to find large chalk sticks. Couldn't find them in Cambodia or Thailand, but there is a shop in Vientiane (the capital of Laos) that bought a crate of buckets of multi colored sidewalk chalk years ago, and I'm the only one who buys it. I've now bought at least 10 buckets. The only problem is that there are only two white sticks in each bucket and Vientiane is very far from Phnom Penh.... sigh.

244 points by curtis 11y ago

Price history is interesting [1], I'll take a guess that information of Hagoromo discontinuing this product went viral in January. [1] http://camelcamelcamel.com/Hagoromo-Fulltouch-White-Chalk-72pcs/product/B007R76ND2?context=browse http://camelcamelcamel.com/Hagoromo-Fulltouch-White-Chalk-72...

anigbrowl 11y ago
Oh my goodness what a wonderful site. I wanted to make something like this years ago and even registered a domain (buyitwhen.com) but everyone I explained the idea to just laughed at me and I didn't really know how to get started on it. Who's laughing now? Well mostly the people who are monetizing this thing but I am laughing along with them in an I-knew-it-would-work fashion. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

ot 11y ago

In case anyone's wondering what the formula on the blackboard is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper's_self-referential_formula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper's_self-referential_form...

fsk 11y ago

The reason you have problems with markers is that, when a marker is out of ink, people put it back on the whiteboard instead of throwing it in the trash.

moultano 11y ago
That's a strange phenomena. People don't seem to think of whiteboard markers as disposable things. If one isn't writing they think it either needs to be fixed, or that they aren't using it correctly and it might resume writing later. I've tried to fight this by ostentatiously throwing them immediately in the trash the first time they stop writing, and it seems to be catching. I don't encounter nearly as many empty ones as I used to.
- untog 11y ago
  The problem is likely that there aren't spares available. For some reason companies are notorious for locking up whiteboard pens and only giving new ones when you've signed some obscure form in triplicate.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    I feel irrationally responsible. I used to steal them out of the stationary cupboard in high school during the 1980s and give them away to anyone who wanted some, and was surprised at how popular they were with other students. At the time I thought that either everyone else liked art class as much as I did, or that perhaps some of them were using them for graffiti, but some years later it dawned on me that they provided a relatively safe way to abuse solvents :-.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  > People don't seem to think of whiteboard markers as disposable things. // Perhaps that's because they're usually refillable - the writing tip lasts much longer than the ink supply.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Just need a small green bin with the "chasing arrow" logo marked "marker recycling." Then at night the custodians will just tip it into the trash as they do with most recycling containers now.
freework 11y ago
Usually when a marker "runs out" it just has all the ink drained to the back of the pen. If you hold the pen with the tip facing down, it'll drain the ink back to the tip and it will write again.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Considering the fact that most whiteboards are installed vertically and that writing involves the tip being at a higher elevation than the back of the pen, this doesn't seem very sustainable. Yet another reason to prefer blackboards.

kqr2 11y ago

OT, however, this made me think of Brandon Sanderson's book The Rithmatist where chalk and its formulation is an integral part of magic. http://smile.amazon.com/Rithmatist-Brandon-Sanderson-ebook/dp/B00AJGNICW/ http://smile.amazon.com/Rithmatist-Brandon-Sanderson-ebook/d...

GuiA 11y ago

I grew up writing on blackboards, so obviously this is purely my subjective preference, but I also find blackboards much better to think on than whiteboards. One thing I particularly don't like is that I tend to write quite fast; the faster you write, the more likely it is that a marker will leave a thin, washed out, barely legible stroke, whereas chalk is always nice and clear. I also tend to leave things up on my board for a few days, after which a lot of dry erase markers become a pain to erase, whereas chalk always erases nicely. I have a whiteboard in my office, but if I could get it switched out with a blackboard without bothering my nice office manager who already has way too much work to be bothered by my weird requests, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
I like whiteboards a lot more now that I've discovered the joy of fine-tipped whiteboard markers.
reneherse 11y ago
I recently discovered that common alcohol-based hand sanitizer works very well to remove stubborn white board marker. Not sure if it just works on my particular brand of markers or if the solvent is more universal, but give it a try.
- innguest 11y ago
  Hand sanitizer will usually have moisturizer. It's better to use isopropyl alcohol as close to 100% as possible.
- greggman 11y ago
  I've found that drawing over the mark with a white board marker seems to make it removable.
  - namplaa 11y ago
    I've found that it also works for permanent marker.

ryanobjc 11y ago

Someone pointed out that it's really hard to erase white boards. While it's trivial to erase a blackboard. Better for top secret stuff.

innguest 11y ago
Point them to this helpful link. :) http://rumkin.com/reference/whiteboard/index.php http://rumkin.com/reference/whiteboard/index.php

quasiresearcher 11y ago

I remember a discussion about this on MathOverlow http://mathoverflow.net/questions/26267/where-to-buy-premium-white-chalk-in-the-u-s-like-they-have-at-rims http://mathoverflow.net/questions/26267/where-to-buy-premium...

monochromatic 11y ago
I remember that being linked from this article.

jipumarino 11y ago

I taught with blackboard and chalk at a university and then at a high school for 9 years. I'm allergic and hated the chalk with a burning passion.

nwhitehead 11y ago

In my mind the real tragedy is blackboards. Almost nowhere has good blackboards anymore except for math departments in older universities that stubbornly refuse to replace their old boards. Since the 1970s everything has been replaced with inferior materials.

scott_karana 11y ago
What makes for a good blackboard? Could they be reproduced?
- nwhitehead 11y ago
  The old good ones are heavy, dark, and silky smooth. The new ones are lighter, noisier, have more friction, and erasing leaves more of a mess (in my opinion). Reading online people say that the old slate ones were harder to erase and had glare problems. I agree with the glare, the old style boards do show glare from sunlight coming in from side windows which is annoying.

gsam 11y ago

While I grew up with mostly whiteboards, there's just something magical about blackboards. Disregarding my disgust for screeching on a blackboard, mathematics on a chalkboard seems so natural. Where I study they've been constantly removing blackboards and even whiteboards. Now we're left with dozens of terrible document cameras, which nobody can be enthusiastic about.

bryondowd 11y ago
How is this the only post that mentions the chalkboard screeching? That noise was the bane of my existence in school. Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it than most, but it would make my skin crawl for the rest of the class, and if there were someone inexperienced using the board and producing considerable squeals, I couldn't focus on anything and had to restrain myself from just getting up and leaving the room. If for no other reason, this makes whiteboards a godsend.

hkmurakami 11y ago

I remember news of the demise of the company hitting Japanese media outlets a couple of months ago. Here are some tidbits from that article that weren't covered by the Gizmodo piece: - A group of American mathematicians reportedly purchased 1 metric ton of the chalk. - Hagoromo was a technologically pioneering company, with things like (1) innovations in a greener manufacturing process for chalk, (2) chalk that can write on a wet blackboard surface, and (3) colored chalk that could be discerned by people who are color blind. - The company is shutting down not because of revenue problems, but because of the ailing health of the President and lack of a successor. Iirc the current president is the 3rd head of the company in its history.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago
"Lack of a successor". This is a very common problem these days; during the winter I bought a sweater at a Portland outdoor gear shop after searching all over creation for real wool clothing as it was a bitterly cold winter. The owner told me that he could not find someone to buy his store as everyone shops online these days. When he retires he's just going to shut it down.
- jotm 11y ago
  Can't he hire someone who would go online?

beloch 11y ago

Another evil of whiteboard markers is that they dry out. Leaving them open hastens their demise. This is especially noticeable right at the end of their lives when capping them in between periods of drawing and switching between several dying markers can get you through a talk. Chalk is not entirely without treachery itself. The common North American breed is thinner and prone to snapping if you press too hard. If you don't bring your own with you, you're likely to have to make do with one of the tiny stubs that have been left behind. It's also pretty common to run into chalk brushes that contain more chalk than your chalk box.

blt 11y ago

Watch video lectures from MIT, they know what's up. 9 blackboards sliding on vertical rails. The lecturer doesn't have to waste time erasing boards, and the history stays up for a long time in case students fall behind on their notes.

ptaipale 11y ago
Umm, wasn't something like this a standard thing already long ago? I gave the exercise lessons for programming courses at TKK (now Aalto University) over 25 years ago, and in the bigger lecture halls, we had a system where there were four or five blackboards rotating up/down with an electric control. So you'd fill one blackboard, and then push a button, and the used up blackboard would lift up, remain visible, and you'd go on with the next blackboard. The system looked like it had been in use since the 1960's when the campus was built.
mavhc 11y ago
Ah yes, pre Gutenberg teaching, the lecture version of 100 monks making copies of your work
- tfgg 11y ago
  You know what? Those lectures were the ones I remember 10x better than the ones with printed handouts and powerpoint slides.
  - mavhc 11y ago
    Well, the Gutenberg Method of teaching suggests that instead of just reading handouts in the lecture you read them beforehand and do the problem solving in the lecture time, when you have the experts available to help when you find out you actually don't understand. http://entropysite.oxy.edu/morrison.html http://entropysite.oxy.edu/morrison.html
    - tfgg 11y ago
      Ok, but I'd tend to call those "classes" or "supervisions"/"tutorials" if in small groups. That essay seems to focus on how copying from the blackboard can go wrong, without covering the experience since 1986 of how powerpoint and handouts go even more wrong. This isn't to say I totally disagree. I didn't bother with many lectures in undergrad, and most of my learning happened in classes/supervisions, which I guess are equivalent to what that guy calls the "Gutenberg method". It's just that I found when the lecture was copying from a blackboard, it tended to be worthwhile going - especially since it forces a slower pace and forces you to read the material exactly.

alister 11y ago

All sorts of high-quality stationery are becoming impossible to find. I used to love poking around real stationery stores as a kid. Today's "warehouse" stores are a lot less fun that a real stationer. For people who don't know, a real stationer would have 10x the number of SKUs that Staples and Office Depot carry. - Elastic bands from almost any store today are now a synthetic beige or grayish-tan material that is much less springy than pure rubber, and it rots leaving a sticky residue in less than a year. A real stationer used to have dozens of shapes and sizes of elastics, not 3 or 4 choices you have now. - A high quality manual stapler is really hard to find. I haven't found any equal to my Apsco 2002 stapler which is no longer made. Everything I tried jams more often. - If you want to put an envelope snugly inside a slightly larger envelope -- for example, to enclose a reply envelope -- good luck finding that in any brick-and-mortar store today. You'll have to order it. Those huge arts and crafts stores like Michaels do have an overlap with what a real stationer used to be, but it's not a superset. I've noticed some differences by country too: Compared to the US, good quality stationery is very hard to find in Brazil (even in rich neighborhoods)[1]. Generally in brick-and-mortar stores in Western Europe, you find high-quality stationery more easily than in the US warehouse stores. I've never been to Japan, so I'm curious to know what it's like there. [1] http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Items_more_expensive_and_less_expensive_in_Brazil http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Items_more_expensive_...

Elepsis 11y ago
I came back from my last trip to Japan with more than $50 in pens and notebooks, so in a nutshell: the Japanese stationery market is amazing, and even a 7-11 on any random street corner will have a better and dramatically higher quality stationery selection than most big box stores in the US.
lips 11y ago
> - A high quality manual stapler is really hard to find. I haven't found any equal to my Apsco 2002 stapler which is no longer made. Everything I tried jams more often. Luckily, the dimensions of a standard staple haven't change in 50+ years, so you can purchase a beautiful used old Ace Pilot for under $15 - http://munk.org/typecast/2014/05/21/stapler-of-the-week-1938-ace-pilot-model-404/ http://munk.org/typecast/2014/05/21/stapler-of-the-week-1938... (Or just get a new-used Apsco 2002 on ebay..) But I agree. We (?) have a tendency to turn iteratively refined utilitarian items into commodities, and in the process, lose the subtle design aspects that made them remarkable in the first place.

facepalm 11y ago

"there’s no way to tell when a marker is running low" Hm, maybe that's a problem that can be solved and earn the inventor good money?

benplumley 11y ago
For a product that's disposable, I doubt any such system could justify its cost.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/UDAZQUI.jpg http://i.imgur.com/UDAZQUI.jpg Depends on the cost to implement and the margin you can charge over competitors I guess.
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    The whiteboard pens we have at work have a semi-transparent barrel: http://www.postofficeshop.co.uk/images/product/extraLarge/2/D8348_L.jpg http://www.postofficeshop.co.uk/images/product/extraLarge/2/...

tenfingers 11y ago

Blackboards are better, but the argument about superior chalk is pretty dumb. I had/used everything from blackboards to digital whiteboards. I still like blackboards better, but it's only going to last as long as digital displays improve. Blackboards lasts forever. Whiteboards, especially the cheap ones, inevitably start to have stains that you cannot clean without some solvent. Blackboards work with any chalk, essentially. You have to be careful about whiteboard markers, because many stink to oblivion (I get asthma out of them), and many others don't erase properly. One of the best markers I tried are the water-based made from Edding, but they're harder to clean, and you have to clean within a couple of hours in order to be able to clean at all. Chalk, on the other hand, lasts forever and can always be cleaned. If you want a perfect blackboard, just use a damp cloth. There's this illusion that whiteboards are cleaner. Actually, they're not. Whiteboard "dry" markers work by depositing a fine powder on the surface. It's initially suspended in a liquid, and then sticks on the whiteboard "ideally" only due to electrostatic tension. Dry marker powder is often toxic, the suspension liquid is often toxic (especially when you breathe it), and the powder sticks fucng everywhere. If you're careful when erasing, a blackboard can be kept very clean. I have one in the kitchen. The markers are expensive. Especially when you want the good, water-based ones. I often have to order those. Chalk is inexpensive, I can buy it anywhere. Why the hell are we using whiteboards?? I built several whiteboards myself. They suck. The best approach to a whiteboard is buying a piece of glass the size you want, and gluing a piece of white adhesive plastic on the back side. Dry marker on the glass always cleans. You might get stains if you leave the marker for days, but they come off easily, with just water. Now what.. digital whiteboards. It's a love-hate relationship. They're completely clean, which is what I like about them, but there are many downsides too. You need power, which means that you need to switch the screen off. A white/blackboard on the other hand shows you stuff all the time. The screen is large, but the pixels are too large. The DPI, at close distance, is ridiculous. They're also too bright when seen at close distance. There's glare. The "pens" suck. But if you did the same with some e-ink technology, I would switch to digital whiteboards instantly, as it would solve all these problems at once. It looks like a dream application where the price of the display wouldn't matter much (ardesia costs a fortune nowdays anyway). I had to use at some point an Epson projector which had some whiteboard capability on it. The pen had an infrared sensor/reflector on top, which meant that you had to hold the pen without making a shadow between the projector and the pen. Who's the idiot that thought this would work??

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

I personally cannot fathom why anyone at all uses whiteboards. When I was at Caltech, we called our Physical Chemistry prof "Wild Bill Goddard" because he wore a cowboy hat and boots to his lectures. His course was largely conceptual, illustrated with balloon-shaped drawings of electron orbitals, drawn with 3-D projection in which the yellow and red were in the plane of the chalkboard while the pale blue projected in and out. We all complained that we could not see the blue diagrams. "That's OK, you're not supposed to, that's why I use pale blue." On night Sonja Benson and I snuck into the classroom to put the arm on his blue chalk. We took it down into the steam tunnels where she doused it with her hairspray, giving it a hard coating so it would not mark the board anymore. The very instant Wild Bill saw what we had done, he cracked his blue stick in half then continued drawing orbital diagrams we were not meant to see.

dasmoth 11y ago
One reason to prefer whiteboards: I find the feeling of touching chalk unbearable.
- ams6110 11y ago
  There's also the occasional teeth-curling screech when a fingernail or little bit of hard matter in the chalk scratches the board. Even at that though, I think I prefer chalkboards.
  - apricot 11y ago
    I teach math, and just as some people cannot taste the bitterness in Brussels sprouts, I'm not affected by the fingernail-on-blackboard noise. I find it very useful for taming a class of wild freshmen, though. I only have to do it once. "It finds the correct delta or else it gets the noise again."
mrgoldenbrown 11y ago
Why did you need to take the chalk into the steam tunnels just to spray it?
11y ago

NoGravitas 11y ago

The solution to your whiteboard woes: don't use dry-erase markers. Use washable crayons (as sold for small children). You'll never be surprised by an empty marker again. They take a damp cloth to wipe off, but they wipe off completely, regardless of how long they've been on the board.

Pxtl 11y ago
My experience is they don't wash as well as dry-erase markers. Propbably the best approach is just to carry two sets of dry-erase markers everywhere, one always sealed.
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
Thanks, I will try this.

tel 11y ago

I don't know the reason, but I feel nearly intellectually crippled since losing access to the multitudes of blackboards available on college campuses. White boards do not even approach the utility of blackboards for me. People in this thread have suggested fine tipped markers and washable crayons—I will try them both!—but I truly feel I will simply not be able to recover the efficiency and value of a blackboard any time soon.

octatoan 11y ago

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/26267/where-to-buy-premium-white-chalk-in-the-u-s-like-they-have-at-rims https://mathoverflow.net/questions/26267/where-to-buy-premiu...

deerpig 11y ago

I have two large blackboards in my own office in Phnom Penh. I couldn't live without them. There is a shop that makes them out of wood. They aren't nearly as nice as a proper ceramic coated steel chalkboard (they still make these in china -- look it up on alibaba) but wood still does the job. The only problem is that it's difficult to find large chalk sticks. Couldn't find them in Cambodia or Thailand, but there is a shop in Vientiane (the capital of Laos) that bought a crate of buckets of multi colored sidewalk chalk years ago, and I'm the only one who buys it. I've now bought at least 10 buckets. The only problem is that there are only two white sticks in each bucket and Vientiane is very far from Phnom Penh.... sigh.