Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>What Dave said, a very wise approach.

And I don't buy that the absolute edge comes from natural stones. 200 years ago that was probably the case, but I can't believe that one can't get better results with the array of man-made abrasives available to us today. Where the hype kicks in is when someone claims that this natural stone gives the best edge, and we're supposed to take him/her at their word. Feels too much like an infomercial to me... Nowhere is there demonstrated evidence that this is the case. I'd like to see a Steve Elliott type of study on natural vs. man-made stones vs. other methods (paper, diamond, etc.). Frank's results are somewhat baffling, this should be investigated further.

While I agree that testing this would be a wonderful project for someone else to do (I tend to not be a quan type), I find the rest of this paragraph a very interesting statement, particularly as it's so easily counter argued based simply on how our planet has been "improved" in the 600 years or so we've been able to even think about such things. Here we have a perfectly good rock making it's way toward entropy without our help for billions of years all of a sudden, after our help, change direction and head toward chaos. We are indeed omnipotent and omniscient.

Pam