Cut that Rock, Dummies!

Lapidary rock saw

The research staff at the Antisocial Network is continually amazed by the depth and breadth of the wisdom imparted to the citizens of the internet by eHow.com's fantastic stable of contributors! (end sarcasm). In fact, they go back and forth between the stupidity of some of the questions and the equal and often greater stupidity of the answers some of these dumbasses manage to generate. A case in point: what moronic netizen is going to google the phrase "How to Cut Rocks with a Rock Saw"?¹ and more to the point, what blithering idiot would ever follow the instructions posted to the mother lode of internet stupidification by Cleveland Van Cecil? Well, the tie goes to the "writer" in this case...

Cleve first used that BA in liberal arts of his to "explain" what a rock saw is. Said Mr. Van Cecil,

"Rock saws are devices used for cutting rocks... Rock saws are available online and in specialty stores."

Well, duh, Cleveland: and here we thought a rock saw might be a power tool used to play rock music: thanks for setting us straight. And thanks, also, for doing a truly crappy job of rewording the instructions in some real rock saw's owner's manual. Too bad you didn't know enough about rock saws to translate the Chinglish into usable English! Otherwise, you might not have said crap like

"Lubricate the rock saw using the correct lubricant included with the saw in the correct lubrication points. Use the owner's manual as a guide."

You're kidding, right, Cleveland? Rock saws – with almost no exceptions – are wet saws that use water as a lubricant and to cool the diamond blade. Duh. Or perhaps you'd have said something less stupid than "Clamp the rock down using the rock saw's vice." Saws have vices? What, it smokes? it's a glutton? it cheats on its spouse? No, moron, a saw has a vise; not a vice. Yet even after this instruction, van Cecil tries to tell a newbie user to "Turn on the blade and slowly lower it onto the rock, or pull the blade forward according to the design of the blade. Use light pressure to bring the blade through the rock."

Full disclosure here: a real rock saw is self-feeding, because even with a diamond blade it can take as much as an hour to cut through a rock sample the size of a football (the American kind). Would you want to stand there "bring[ing] the blade" through the rock for all that time? We know we wouldn't.

Rock saws are an expensive investment, one that only a professional geologist or a dedicated amateur lapidarist would make – not a 20-something liberal arts major (and dumbass). By publishing a set of high-bogosity instructions for a class of very expensive power tools he has clearly never seen, Cleveland Van Cecil wins the coveted Dumbass of the Day award - for the third time (and not the last...).

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_7308009_cut-rocks-rock-saw.html

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