{"id":1548,"date":"2010-10-22T05:37:06","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T11:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1548"},"modified":"2010-10-28T19:51:43","modified_gmt":"2010-10-29T01:51:43","slug":"odd-lots-134","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1548","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>I meant to post this back in May but the item went into a notefile while I was traveling and got misplaced: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.knowing.net\/\">Larry O&#8217;Brien<\/a> did <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sdtimes.com\/content\/article.aspx?ArticleID=34348&amp;page=1\">a very nice detailed comparative review<\/a> of my <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Assembly-Language-Step---Step-Programming\/dp\/0470497025\/\"><em>Assembly Language Step By Step<\/em>, Third Edition<\/a><\/em> and Randy Hyde&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Assembly-Language-Step---step-Programming\/dp\/0471375233\/\"><em>Art of Assembly Language<\/em>, Second Edition<\/a><\/em> over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sdtimes.com\/\">SDTimes<\/a>. Larry understands better than most people that there are multiple ways to approach learning a topic, and that both books have value and don&#8217;t completely overlap one another.<\/li>\n<li>Another tardy item from that same missing notefile: <em>Scientific American<\/em> must be desperate for subscribers, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=carbs-against-cardio\">it had the courage to challenge the biggest sacred cow in medical science<\/a>: the Fat Bad, Carbs Good nonsense that has blown us up like carnival ballooms since it was declared health dogma in the early 1970s.<\/li>\n<li>Part of the problem: Most medical studies are utter crap, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartplanet.com\/technology\/blog\/rethinking-healthcare\/most-medical-studies-are-wrong\/1763\/\">and here&#8217;s why<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2010\/10\/feeling-sad-makes-us-more-creative\/\">here&#8217;s an excellent example<\/a>. Sadness makes me neither creative nor energetic. Furthermore, all the most creative people I know are borderline manic. Insane, maybe. Sad? Not in the least.<\/li>\n<li>In 1970, I built a vertex-first projection model of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/600-cell\">the 600-cell regular polytope in four space<\/a> using D-stix. My senior-year math teacher hung the model from the steam pipes and I never saw it again, but <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2010\/10\/math_monday_what_to_make_from_drink.html\">here&#8217;s a photo of one made out of ordinary drinking straws<\/a>. (Scroll down.)<\/li>\n<li>What is the frequency of a dog shaking water off its fur? The answer: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/blog\/arxiv\/25910\/\">greater than or equal to 4 Hz<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Slate asked &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2271209\/\">Is the movie that almost killed Disney animation really that bad?<\/a>&#8221; My answer: Yes. It&#8217;s the Seventies car in Disney&#8217;s otherwise reasonable animation garage, full of uninteresting things indifferently drawn, with the possible exception of the weird half-dog, half-leprechaun whatchamacallit <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gurgi\">Gurgi<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Horned_King\">The Horned King<\/a> is the least menacing of all Disney cartoon villains, and certainly can&#8217;t hold a candle to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Maleficent\">Maleficent<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_Disney's_Hercules_characters#Hades\">Hades<\/a>, or even <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Characters_in_Disney's_Beauty_and_the_Beast#Gaston\">Gaston<\/a>. <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Chronicles_of_Prydain\">The Chronicales of Prydain<\/a><\/em> is a decent kid-series, and deserves a remake.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I meant to post this back in May but the item went into a notefile while I was traveling and got misplaced: Larry O&#8217;Brien did a very nice detailed comparative review of my Assembly Language Step By Step, Third Edition and Randy Hyde&#8217;s Art of Assembly Language, Second Edition over at SDTimes. Larry understands better [&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":[33,38,39,102,34,32],"class_list":["post-1548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-books","tag-dogs","tag-health","tag-math","tag-movies","tag-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548","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=1548"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1550,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions\/1550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}