Odd Lots
- The IEEE Spectrum reports on the increasingly tiny medical robots that can fix us from the inside. The Sangruse Device is pretty good at that, and the Protea Device is even better. Maybe we won’t have to wait until 2350 for such things after all.
- The more we look, the more influence we see of fragments of Neanderthal genes on the Homo Sap genome. I have got to try one of those gene tests that reports on Neanderthal DNA. (And doesn’t that artist’s conception of a Neanderthal guy for damn remind you of Tolkien’s dwarves?)
- This isn’t an especially good article, but look at the photo of the two skulls. To me, Homo Sap looks like a neotenic Neanderthal. The young are generally more flexible than the old. Maybe we outbred the Neanderthals by being more versatile and willing to adapt to changing conditions and new environments.
- Here’s a nice summary of the case for high-fat, low-carb diets, with lots of good supporting links. Our issues there (and in certain other areas of science) tend not to be bad science (which is common enough) so much as corrupt science.
- Wine and craft beer evidently weren’t enough: There are now meat-doneness snobs.
- Irene Governale Smith, one of my PC Techniques authors, has started a new online magazine for flash SF and fantasy, leaning toward fantasy. Nimue’s Grotto presents eight stories in its first issue, including what is probably the only time-travel story I’ve ever let the public see.
- I never gave this much thought, but it makes sense: When the CRTs in classic arcade games fail, they can’t be replaced, because the supply of 29″ CRT glass screens is almost gone and no more are being made.
- 37 years later, and I never knew this until today: My fanzine PyroTechnics came within seven recs of being on the final Hugo Awards ballot for Best Fanzine in 1980. It took 31 recs to get on the ballot; Pyro got 25. It was enough coming close; I don’t need the cigar.
- This startlingly ill-advised amusement park ride was never built. I don’t care. I still don’t like amusement park rides.
- More from DRB: Peculiar submarines, diving suits, and early submersible craft of several sorts. Plus a salting of modern subs, for comparison. What? The Turtle? But no Hunley?
- Whoa. I wasn’t expecting this: Several Republican legislators have introduced a bill ending federal prohibition of marijuana, returning control of the plant to the states.
- Answering the big questions: Was Kellyanne Conway sitting barefoot on the couch or not? Well, she could have been wearing nude shoes, which are flesh-colored shoes that come in several colors to approximate common human skin tones. Carol says they make the wearers’ legs look longer. That’s useful, I guess. I’m thinking that that the guy who develops chameleon shoes, which alter their colors to match the wearer’s skin, will make a fortune.
- And if Kellyanne Conway putting her shoes on the couch is the worst thing the media can tell us about these days, I’d say we’re in pretty damned good shape.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: food · nanotechnology · neanderthals · publishing · sff · writing
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re: Food Snobbery
I see this as just another example of tribalism, of which you’ve written here many times. The innate human desire to belong to a group (or, more realistically, “pack” or “herd”) requires that there be an “other” from which to distinguish the group. One’s own choices and preferences are obviously superior (if there was a better choice or preference, why wouldn’t one choose that?), so if I’m on Team Medium-Rare, I must be better than anyone on the obviously-lesser Team Burnt-To-A-Crisp. There, I said it, I feel much better now. (While I tenderly cultivate our entrecôte, would you be so kind as to pop down to my wine cellar and fetch a bottle of 1982 Château Margaux Red Bordeaux? The ’82, none of that dreadful ’96 stuff, I don’t even know why they sell it. Open it straightaway and let it breathe for exactly 27 minutes, I’ll time the meat to the wine’s peak flavor. What? You prefer St. Emilion? What kind of heathen are you? Get out of my house!)
At the rate we’re subdividing, I imagine it won’t be long before we’re 330 million tribes of one member each. At that point, mass multiple-personality disorder occurs and we start disagreeing with ourselves…
re: Shoes
I hate to contribute to this tempest in a teacup, but there is no doubt that Ms. Conway was wearing shoes – with heels – on the Oval Office couch.
(I’m not sure what, if any, HTML works in comments, so just a URL: http://i68.tinypic.com/qo83mr.jpg )
Yup. What nobody seems to mention is that different cuts of meat work out better at different degrees of done-ness. I like the best cuts (filet mignon) medium rare, most other steaks medium, and hamburg well-done. Brisket goes in the crockpot and comes out as individual muscle fibers with maybe a little cohesion, but not much.
Like I said years ago, I’ll waltz but hey, I’ll polka! Specialization is for insects–and tribalists.
>At that point, mass multiple-personality disorder occurs
>and we start disagreeing with ourselves…
Um…hate to break it to you, but that’s already happening. In a sense that may be better than tribalism. I already disagree with myself on a regular basis, and I let my two factions fight it out until they choose a winner. This is called “changing my mind” and while I don’t do it often, I definitely do it when necessary.
Thanks for posting that pic–definitely puts a, well, spike in the whole debate. Not nude shoes, either, just pink. I’ll leave the argument about how well her shoes go with her dress to others.
While sometimes you do want a little color contrast, I’m not sure I would wear shoes in that shade of pink with a dress in dark burgundy like Conway was wearing. It would probably depend on the other accessories I had to go with it.
(I had a nice pair of low-heeled pink pumps once, which I wore with a pink border-print casual dress, but I made the mistake of walking through wet grass with them during a photo shoot, and they fell apart on me. 🙁 )
I do like the idea of the “chameleon shoes,” although, of course, you’d not only need to match the wearer’s skin tone, but the color of her hose if she’s wearing any. But why stop at just matching skin tones? If they can change to any color, that’d be the last pair of shoes you ever needed to buy. (At least, in that style and heel height. We’ll always find an excuse to buy more shoes. “I have way too many shoes”…said no woman ever. (giggle) 😀 )
If a novel shoe material could match skin tones, it could match stocking tones, or sock tones, or whatever you held it up against. So yeah, like I said: That inventor would rule at least a third of the world.
I had to smile about mid-way through the submarine article. One of the German subs as designed by Herr Schiff (or as we would say in English “Mr. Ship”).
(Yes, I know that U-Boats were not called ships in those days.)
I had no idea Pyro was even close to being on the ballot…
Hight fat, low carb fodder.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/17/these-people-eat-monkeys-and-piranhas-they-also-have-the-lowest-rates-of-heart-disease-ever-measured/