{"id":1511,"date":"2010-10-09T20:01:56","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T02:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1511"},"modified":"2010-10-12T10:41:33","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T16:41:33","slug":"odd-lots-131","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1511","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>My Geiger counter project is still alive, but I ordered an old telephone magneto from eBay and it just got here. Now I have to work up a scheme to transform its hand-cranked 120VAC to 900VDC in the capacitor bank. Will report back once that section of the device is in the can.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve seen these people in used bookstores and tent sales, and although I knew (vaguely) what they were doing, I hadn&#8217;t seen a detailed description of the culture. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2268000\/ \"target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s why you don&#8217;t find lots of bargains at used book sales<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>A correspondent who will remain nameless suggested that, since I&#8217;m fighting ongoing shingles pain, I should get a Colorado medical marijuana card and do a series on the Colorado weed scene. After all, an MMD is the third-closest retail establishment to my home (after Blockbuster Video and a nail shop.) Well, no. I&#8217;ll go with gabapentin. But if you&#8217;re curious about the kind of nuthouse medical marijuana has become (at least in Michigan and probably Colorado as well) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/articles\/gone-pot\" target=\"_blank\">read this<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Taco sauce cleans the oxide layer off of pennies, leaving bright metal in its wake. How? We&#8217;re not entirely sure, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cruftbox.com\/cruft\/docs\/cleaningcopper.html\">here&#8217;s an interesting discussion of the question<\/a>&#8211;and some fun citizen science.<\/li>\n<li>The Soviet Union had a lot of hardware done and mostly tested for a lunar landing circa 1970, but it didn&#8217;t have the required launch power of a Saturn V, so <a href=\"http:\/\/jalopnik.com\/5657385\/rare-look-at-moscows-secret-failed-moon-program\">the program was mothballed and the landers abandoned<\/a>. (Thanks to Frank Glover begin_of_the_skype_highlighting\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0end_of_the_skype_highlighting for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>On the same site, and in the same vein, are <a href=\"http:\/\/jalopnik.com\/5657142\/sikorskys-motorized-sleigh-and-other-forgotten-soviet-snowmobiles\" target=\"_blank\">some photos of early Soviet snowmobiles<\/a>, many of which were powered by aviation engines and air propellers rather than treads of some kind.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5659271\/behind-the-chicken-goop-the-truth-and-science-of-chicken-nuggets\" target=\"_blank\">This may be TMI about chicken nuggets<\/a>. You judge. I&#8217;ll stick with beef.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s an interesting take on the Periodic Table, called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lateralscience.co.uk\/misc\/Pspiral.html\" target=\"_blank\">Helix Chemica<\/a>, from the 1944 book <em>Hackh&#8217;s Chemical Dictionary<\/em>. &#8220;Hackh&#8221; is a wonderful name. I think I&#8217;ll steal it.<\/li>\n<li>Our President wants a better America through science, technology, engineering, and math. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=d2D-MFNKvLM\" target=\"_blank\">A little more glue behind the Presidential Seal would be a good start<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Ok. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ktuu.com\/news\/ktuu-radio-flyer-car-092910,0,1784245.story\" target=\"_blank\">This is silly<\/a>. But there is something wonderfully, goofily likeable about it.<\/li>\n<li>Like I predicted, people are going to be making jokes about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1503\">this thing<\/a> forever. I liked <a href=\"http:\/\/wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/10\/thejoshbutton.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">this one<\/a>. Not only epic fail, but epic humilation. <em>Anger is deadly<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Geiger counter project is still alive, but I ordered an old telephone magneto from eBay and it just got here. Now I have to work up a scheme to transform its hand-cranked 120VAC to 900VDC in the capacitor bank. Will report back once that section of the device is in the can. I&#8217;ve seen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[21,37,43,54,55],"class_list":["post-1511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-electronics","tag-food","tag-humor","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1511"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}