> This is all good advice but one thing it doesn't touch on is: which pen and notebook?

In what way could it possibly be relevant? Do you actually believe that the author could suggest a universally suitable pen and paper type? What if he'd had his best results with toilet paper, a sugar thermometer and a soot/diarrhea/lemon juice blend for the ink? Would his advice be any more complete?

The moment you lose sight of the habit and instead pay homage to paper and pens, its a fetish instead of a practical discipline.

You can't separate the tools from the craft. Practical disciplines aren't just about doing things but also doing them well. The title of the piece was "take better notes, by hand" so you know, the tools I think are relevent. And come to mention it, the "by hand" part needs some attention too, because one complaint I often hear is that typing is less fatiguing than writing longhand. Ergonomics plays a big role here -- you're not going to write anything at all if you get cramped up. So yeah, I think that the tools are wholly relevent to the idea of taking better notes.

Generally people don't write with diarrhea for a good reason. I think anyone suggesting positive results would be suspect.