{"id":1969,"date":"2011-06-06T14:48:05","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T20:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1969"},"modified":"2011-10-31T13:24:56","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T19:24:56","slug":"odd-lots-157","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1969","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/sparkplug9.com\/easybits-go-skype-you-are-not-being-hacked\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s another take on the EasyBits GO debacle<\/a>, from a guy who used to work at Easybits. Even if it&#8217;s not a trojan, it&#8217;s still crapware, and careless crapware at that. The Microsoft connection is intriguing: MS will soon be reviewing the entire Skype ecosystem, and may decide to do some decontamination. I don&#8217;t think it will go well for EasyBits.<\/li>\n<li>Down in the trenches in the Carb Wars, people who yell, &#8220;A calorie is a calorie! It&#8217;s just the laws of thermodynamics!&#8221; don&#8217;t understand thermodynamics. I&#8217;ve known this for years. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC506782\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s a good explanation<\/a>. (Thanks to David Stafford for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Mike Reith saw a pure white squirrel awhile back, up near Denver. I had never heard of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewildclassroom.com\/biomes\/speciesprofile\/deciduousforest.html\" target=\"_blank\">non-albino white squirrels<\/a> before, but they exist, and appear to be spreading due to evolutionary selection&#8211;by humans.<\/li>\n<li>Maybe it wasn&#8217;t us who extinctified the Pleistocene megafauna. (Or at least our paleolithic ancestors.) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spacedaily.com\/reports\/Did_A_Massive_Solar_Proton_Event_Fry_The_Earth_999.html\" target=\"_blank\">Maybe it was the Sun<\/a>. Scary business. (Thanks to Jim Strickland for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>From the Words-I-Didn&#8217;t-Know-Until-Last-Week Department: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Prosopagnosia\" target=\"_blank\">prosopagnosia<\/a><\/em>, the inability to recognizes faces or familiar objects. (Thanks to Bruce Baker for calling it to my attention.)<\/li>\n<li>From Pete Albrecht comes <a href=\"http:\/\/d.yimg.com\/kq\/groups\/7769081\/124862335\/name\/Tornado1.wmv\" target=\"_blank\">a link to a video of a train wreck caused by a tornado<\/a>&#8211;with the wrinkle that the wreck is filmed from a security cam on one of the freight cars. Toward the end we see a derailed tanker striking sparks as it&#8217;s dragged against the rails. Made me wonder what would have happened had it been full of LP gas&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Forgive the vulgarity and the pervasive comics\/movies influence, but <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5503945\/good-character-development-includes-the-all+important-f-yeah-moment\" target=\"_blank\">this is a point that needs to be made<\/a>, and textual fiction is no exception. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>I like sprouts. I haven&#8217;t eaten them for ten years. <a href=\"http:\/\/shelflifeadvice.com\/content\/raw-sprouts-nutritious-and-dangerous\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s why<\/a>. Alas, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2011\/06\/06\/us-ecoli-beansprouts-idUSTRE7552N720110606\" target=\"_blank\">being organic doesn&#8217;t help<\/a>. (Thanks once again to Pete.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.phdcomics.com\/comics\/archive.php?comicid=1174\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s a cogent (and funny) illustration of a great deal of what&#8217;s wrong with science these days<\/a>. Hint: It&#8217;s not science. Most of the problem is the butthead festival we call the media. (The rest is the grant system.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s another take on the EasyBits GO debacle, from a guy who used to work at Easybits. Even if it&#8217;s not a trojan, it&#8217;s still crapware, and careless crapware at that. The Microsoft connection is intriguing: MS will soon be reviewing the entire Skype ecosystem, and may decide to do some decontamination. I don&#8217;t think [&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":[41,39,36,54,18,56],"class_list":["post-1969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-health","tag-malware","tag-science","tag-sf","tag-trains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969","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=1969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2175,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions\/2175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}