{"id":184,"date":"2008-09-19T20:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-20T00:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=184"},"modified":"2008-12-13T23:01:50","modified_gmt":"2008-12-14T03:01:50","slug":"odd-lots-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=184","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Do not\u2014I repeat\u2014<i>do not<\/i> buy the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Greenlee-CableCaster-Wire-Pulling-Darts\/dp\/B0000WU20G\">Greenlee                 Cablecaster<\/a> if you&apos;re faced with running wires through difficult                 places. I&apos;m running a 65-foot shortave antenna in our attic, basically                 throwing cords for stringing two wires from the center of the                 structure to each end along the long axis, and the unit was a                 total botch. In every single case, the fishline tied to the nifty                 glow-in-the-dark dart broke under the force of the spring that                 throws it. (I wisely tried it out in the street before I took                 it up in the attic.) After narrowly resisting the urge to stomp                 on the damned thing, I drilled a hole in a tennis ball, threaded                 a contractor cord through it with a large cotter pin, and lobbed                 the ball myself. It worked. And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/atticview.jpg\">here&apos;s                 what I was dealing with<\/a>. I got the ball through that maze                 with my own right arm, though it took fifteen minutes of bad throws.                 I now know what pitching practice must be like.<\/li>\n<li>Alluva sudden, egg and onion matzo crackers have simultaneously                 vanished from all the local supermarkets. I have not seen any                 for two months, after reliably seeing them in all kosher sections                 throughout the five years we&apos;ve been here. They&apos;ve been my favorite                 soup cracker for 25 years. I cannot figure this; if there&apos;s been                 a change in kosher rules or something like that, it has not reached                 Google yet.<\/li>\n<li>An article in today&apos;s <i>Wall Street Journal<\/i> reports studies                 indicating that atheists are <i>four times<\/i> more likely to                 believe in Bigfoot, ghosts, and the Lost Continent of Atlantis                 than people who go to church at least once a week. (31% vs. 8%)                 Faith appears to be inborn, and if you don&apos;t believe in God, well,                 there are plenty of other things to choose from in the marketplace                 of unprovable phenomena. <\/li>\n<li>I&apos;m not sure this is proven, but I sure wish it were: A study                 indicating that <a href=\"http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/HealthSci\/Eating_veggies_shrinks_the_brain\/articleshow\/3480629.cms\">eating                 vegetables shrinks your brain<\/a>. (Thanks to Brook Monroe for                 the link.)<\/li>\n<li>And if broccoli-induced brain shrinkage isn&apos;t enough to scare                 you off the Whole Foods wagon, consider that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2198756\/\">organic                 soils are often just as contaminated with heavy metals as soils                 used in conventional agriculture<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Off-brand 16GB SDHC cards are now down to $35 at NewEgg, and                 even name brands like SanDisk are in the $60 range. Three of those                 will carry every bit of data I have except for ripped ISOs, and                 according to a friend of mine who works in the industry we still                 have no crisp idea how long the data will last.<\/li>\n<li>Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I dunno; it seems                 <i>mighty<\/i> quiet somehow. Wait a sec&#8230;the pirates all had                 subprime mortgages on their ships\u2014and they&apos;re all now underwater!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do not\u2014I repeat\u2014do not buy the Greenlee Cablecaster if you&apos;re faced with running wires through difficult places. I&apos;m running a 65-foot shortave antenna in our attic, basically throwing cords for stringing two wires from the center of the structure to each end along the long axis, and the unit was a total botch. In every [&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":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","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=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}