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Sheffield-based company Viners has produced the "Assure" range, square-ended knives which are "shaped to reduce and prevent injuries, accidents and fatalities." With knife crimes in England and Wales at their highest in a decade, a 3% increase on last year and the highest level since 2009, this new knife is intended to not be used in crimes and only in the kitchen. While anti-stabbing messages have been left on fastfood containers and a crackdown on knife crime has been tried, for which included limiting the sale of knives, so far nothing has blunted the knife based problem.
When have social problems been solved by technical solutions?
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UK Company Makes Knives Without Tips As Knife Crime Wave Surges
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Nadia Comaneci, simple perfection.
-- '76 Olympics
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday January 19 2020, @08:51PM (17 children)
No tip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_knife#Chinese_chef.27s_knife [wikipedia.org]
Doesn't fit everything but works fine for most things. I also have a 6" Santoku, 8" western chef and 10" western chef around but I keep reaching for the Chinese whenever I can and end up using a pairing knife for the few things that it's just too big to get done properly.
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(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:39PM (8 children)
Yeah, a bigass cleaver could never hurt anyone.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:57PM (7 children)
Bigass cleavers are rarely useful for cooking - the most frequent legit use for knives - you need versatility more than you need, umm, bigassedness.
Even more, in everyday life cases, it's harder to cause a fatal wound by slicing than by stabbing - not only the "impact cross-section" is far larger for an edge comparing with a tip (thus you need a higher force to cause the wound), but the number of body areas a cut is immediately fatal is lower than the area where a stab is fatal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:28PM (6 children)
I'm sure the next person to be beheaded with a machete will find those words comforting.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:43PM
Yes, because machetes are protected by a cloak of invisibility and the second amendment.
And, so true, if a solution is not perfect then it's useless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Monday January 20 2020, @02:28AM (4 children)
Need a "+0 must be from USA" mod.
And, not for this post, but also need a "-0 Whataboutism" mod (aka "the TMB" mod)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 20 2020, @05:32AM (3 children)
Dude, we're talking about pointy knives and some guy comes back with "just use these non-pointy knives that are bigger than meat cleavers". The stupid there is worth making public note of.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @06:06AM (2 children)
Dude, not only your memory, but your reading comprehension is in decline too.
Have you made you will yet? I mean, while you still have the "sound mind and memory" over the limits those lawyers can't dispute them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @07:04AM (1 child)
Interesting historical fact, for indigenous persons like the Buzzard. American Traders used to sell knives to Native Americans that were made plain iron, but "case-hardened", a process cheaper than producing actual blade-quality steel, but only produced a thin skin of steel on the blade. The natives, being no dummies (until TMB, at least), learned to only sharpen the blades on one side, so that the hard steel on the other side would form the edge. And stay much sharper, for the scalping of the invading white masses of inferior persons.
Of course, the scalping was introduced by the British during the French and Indians War, and was never a part of Native American culture. Takes a Brit to come up with something like that! Kind of like the whole "heads on pikes" thing, or "Brexit".
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 20 2020, @02:42PM
We also learned something about what the government's actual motives are when they try to disarm you. You'd think everyone else would have learned that back in the late 1700s but apparently it's been long enough that they've forgotten.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:45PM (3 children)
Here's a tip: they still seem to work quite well for killing humans
Just one example: https://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/05/17/china.cleaver.attack/index.html [cnn.com]
Removing the tip is just pointless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:01PM (1 child)
Wait a minute, are you telling me a cleaver is JUST as deadly as an assault knife (unnecessarily pointy tipped knife)?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 20 2020, @02:19PM
WTF is an "assault knife"? Maybe you can find a definition here - http://www.assaultweapon.info/ [assaultweapon.info]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:55PM
You went 10 years back and quoted one non-lethal attack by a crazy person. Try finding a few news pieces about criminals robbing and killing people with those knives. Not saying you won't find any. But the thing is, concealment wise, they make a poor choice for a criminal.
Regardless, my only point was that there's some billion or so people out there working just fine with tip-less Chinese chef knives and that it's quite possible there's more Chinese chef knives being used in professional settings than western chef knives.
Personally I think the whole thing is just something local UK cutlery companies lobbied for to drive off foreign imports from the store shelves much like the ban on Chinese AKs if you're familiar with gun legislation history in the US so when people go to look for new silverware, they'll only find British brand on the shelf. It's just the sort of pathetically ineffective and ridiculous protectionism that you'd expect from the British.
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(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:09PM (3 children)
Uh, the front tip of the blade is a tip. Unless it's rounded like a frosting knife it has a tip (a place where force can be concentrated at a single point).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @12:08AM (2 children)
So true.
For those who can't yet see the equivalence, ponder this: sewing needles are unnecessary, a cleaver knife has a tip too and, as such, can be used for sewing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday January 20 2020, @10:27PM (1 child)
Bad analogy. Neither can traditional chef knives be used for sewing and presumably they have a tip as that's the reason for the currently advertised product.
The point of a knife tip when cooking is to be able to manipulate things (e.g., when slicing something small like small garlic cloves) or to pierce into things, for which the tip of a cleaver works comparably well.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @10:55PM
Not an analogy. Just a hint that the existence of a tip is not relevant by itself, need to be taken within a context of the usability of the tip.
Trying to use a cleaver's "tip" (more like a corner) to stab is almost useless - unless you need just shallow cuts.
Slicing garlic cloves works for me much better with a thin blade, the tip is irrelevant.
But I do see the value of a sharp tipped scalpel when I'm slipping in the chair in front of my electronics workstation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford