{"id":1612,"date":"2010-12-11T15:14:52","date_gmt":"2010-12-11T22:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1612"},"modified":"2010-12-11T15:14:52","modified_gmt":"2010-12-11T22:14:52","slug":"odd-lots-138","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1612","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>I got an email recently from ABEBooks inviting me to their Weird Book Room. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/books\/weird\/index.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-101124-h00-weirdbkrA-_-01book#row37\" target=\"_blank\">They were telling the truth<\/a>, and I was not disappointed. I was a little surprised that I only own two of the titles on the list (guess which ones!) but I&#8217;ve already ordered another: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/products\/isbn\/9780811852210\">How to Be Pope<\/a><\/em> by Piers Marchant. I mean, c&#8217;mon, how could I <em>not<\/em>?<\/li>\n<li>I complain a lot about pocket camera latency, but check this one out: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bhphotovideo.com\/find\/newsLetter\/Leica-S1.jsp\" target=\"_blank\">A seminal 1990 digital camera from Leica<\/a> took <em>three minutes<\/em> to grab a shot. Those handles are cool, sure, but I&#8217;ll guess that a tripod works better.<\/li>\n<li>Think of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Battle_of_the_Milvian_Bridge\" target=\"_blank\">Constantine at the Milvian Bridge<\/a> for a moment: &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceweather.com\/submissions\/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Peter-RosAcn-_MG_2838x3-05Meng_1291904000.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">In This Sign, Conquer<\/a>.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Various party poopers emailed me <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asylum.com\/2010\/12\/09\/argentinian-cruise-ship-smashed-by-30-foot-waves\/\" target=\"_blank\">this story<\/a> about an Antarctic cruise ship that lost an engine and got pounded by 45-foot waves somewhere in the Drake Passage. Yes, I feel better already, thanks.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t forget <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Geminids\" target=\"_blank\">the Geminids meteor shower<\/a> late Monday night\/Tuesday morning early. It&#8217;s probably cold where you are, but <a href=\"http:\/\/transientsky.wordpress.com\/2010\/12\/10\/preview-of-the-2010-geminids\/\" target=\"_blank\">the show might be worth it<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>There will also be <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/December_2010_lunar_eclipse\" target=\"_blank\">a total lunar eclipse<\/a> the night of December 20\/21.<\/li>\n<li>I used to pick up <em>The Fortean Times<\/em> at the Village Green Bookstore in Rochester, NY in the early 80s, and it was fine bathroom reading. I&#8217;m delighted to report that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forteantimes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">their Web site is still good<\/a>, albeit less convenient in the bathroom. I wasn&#8217;t aware that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forteantimes.com\/strangedays\/mythbusters\/4573\/tutankhamens_peas.html\" target=\"_blank\">no viable peas were found in King Tut&#8217;s tomb<\/a>, but that sort of ignorance is easily corrected. Ditto <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forteantimes.com\/strangedays\/mythbusters\/2725\/the_parakeets_of_london.html\" target=\"_blank\">the feral parrots of London<\/a>, which have been there long before Jimi Hendrix made the scene and felt that it needed some color. Hey, paint&#8217;s cheaper, and it doesn&#8217;t poop on you when you&#8217;re sitting under a tree.<\/li>\n<li>I guess the primary virtue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ugo.com\/movies\/100-best-movie-spaceships\" target=\"_blank\">The 100 Best Movie Spaceships<\/a> is that 100 spaceships is a <em>lot<\/em> of spaceships, so just about everybody gets in. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>David Stafford provides a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/acarol.woz.org\/antikythera_mechanism.html\" target=\"_blank\">a functional re-creation of the Antikythera Device&#8230;in Lego<\/a>! (I&#8217;m guessing that it&#8217;s also been done in Meccano, but I&#8217;ve not gone looking.)<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s a remarkably long and detailed (for attention-challenged io9, at least) essay on <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5709637\/what-would-really-happen-if-you-were-exposed-to-vacuum\" target=\"_blank\">the biological effects of sudden exposure to vacuum<\/a>, a la Dave Bowman in <em>2001<\/em>. As a bonus, author Geoff Landis explains (with equations) how quickly your spacecraft will lose atmosphere if punctured. I&#8217;d read this site more frequently if there were more of that and less of <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5710659\/this-green-hornet-fast-food-tie+in-is-deeply-disturbing\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>My old friend Neil Rest is right: These are about as cool as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.agora-gallery.com\/artistpage\/Franco_Recchia.aspx#\">artistic representations of cities get<\/a>. And they&#8217;re all made of techie castoffs, including cardboard. Wow! (And in the comments is a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/leapsecond.com\/pages\/chess\/\" target=\"_blank\">a chess set made of various coax connectors<\/a>. Way wow!)<\/li>\n<li>I wouldn&#8217;t have thought of this: Coat a few bazillion tobacco mosaic viruses with conductive material, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physorg.com\/news\/2010-12-virally-nano-electrodes-boost-energy-capacity.html\">you can use them make batteries with ten times the capacity of lithium-ion tech<\/a>. Well, with the ongoing decline in smoking, what else are all those poor unemployed tobacco viruses gonna do? (Thanks to Roy Harvey for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>From David Stafford comes a pointer to instructions on <a href=\"http:\/\/efnx.com\/measuring-the-speed-of-light-using-marshmallows-in-a-microwave\/\" target=\"_blank\">how to determine either the speed of light or the operating frequency of your microwave oven<\/a> by tormenting marshmallows.<\/li>\n<li>With that, I think I&#8217;m caught up on the Odd Lots file. More as they come in.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got an email recently from ABEBooks inviting me to their Weird Book Room. They were telling the truth, and I was not disappointed. I was a little surprised that I only own two of the titles on the list (guess which ones!) but I&#8217;ve already ordered another: How to Be Pope by Piers Marchant. [&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":[33,43,51,54,18,72],"class_list":["post-1612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-books","tag-humor","tag-photography","tag-science","tag-sf","tag-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612","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=1612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}