{"id":2114,"date":"2011-09-03T15:28:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-03T21:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2114"},"modified":"2011-09-03T15:30:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-03T21:30:10","slug":"odd-lots-167","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2114","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Wired has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/thisdayintech\/2011\/09\/0902magnetic-storm-disrupts-telegraphy-carrington-event\/\" target=\"_blank\">a nice piece<\/a> on the 1859 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Solar_storm_of_1859\" target=\"_blank\">Carrington Event<\/a>; basically, the strongest solar storm in the last 500 years, assuming ice core data is a reliable proxy for storm strength. Early landline telegraph operators actually disconnected their batteries and passed traffic solely on power induced in the lines by solar activity. Whew. Now <em>that&#8217;s<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/QRP_operation\" target=\"_blank\">QRP<\/a>!<\/li>\n<li>Alas, even with sunspot numbers hovering at 120, I&#8217;m not hearing much DX out here. I&#8217;m not even hearing the East Coast. So much for Cycle 24.<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s a difference between &#8220;loving reading&#8221; and &#8220;loving reading what the literary class loves to read.&#8221; We can teach the first. <a href=\"http:\/\/chronicle.com\/article\/We-Cant-Teach-Students-to\/128400\/\" target=\"_blank\">By teaching the second, we may teach a good many students to stop reading completely<\/a>. (Thanks to Rev. Sharon Hart for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Here be <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/news\/2011\/09\/no-nazi-comparisons-sounds-like-something-hitler-would-say.ars\" target=\"_blank\">the history of Godwin&#8217;s Law<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>From the September 1922 issue of <em>Popular Science<\/em> comes <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=6CgDAAAAMBAJ&amp;pg=PA70&amp;dq=radio+short-wave+wavelength+carrier&amp;lr=&amp;as_brr=3&amp;ei=ryI8St2gF4OmkASS4bS6BQ Popular Science, Sept. 19#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">a crystal radio in a corn-cob pipe<\/a>, shown in one of the geekiest Roaring Twenties radio geek photos ever taken. I doubt this would work (well) but I suppose it had to be tried. (Thanks to David Stafford for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/antiqueradio.org\/art\/RadioCraftDecember1936.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">This radio geek photo<\/a> shows a set that would certainly work (<a href=\"http:\/\/antiqueradio.org\/art\/RadioCraftDecember1936Page329.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">schematic here<\/a>) but I&#8217;m not sure he would have been let on an airliner even in 1936.<\/li>\n<li>By 1949, radio geek photos were in serious decline, but 15-year-old <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hope_Lange\" target=\"_blank\">Hope Lange<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/antiqueradio.org\/art\/RadioElectronicsJune1949Cover.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">gave it a damned good try<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>By sheer coincidence, <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=6CgDAAAAMBAJ&amp;lpg=PA70&amp;dq=radio short-wave wavelength carrier&amp;lr&amp;as_brr=3&amp;pg=PA1#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">the cover of that very same issue of <em>Popular Science<\/em><\/a> cited above for the corn-cob radio shows a drawing of a &#8220;monocopter,&#8221; an unlikely but at least physically possible device modeled on maple tree seeds, which I mentioned in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?paged=2\" target=\"_blank\">Odd Lots back on July 28<\/a>. This should be easy to model; has anybody ever seen it done?<\/li>\n<li>Maybe I&#8217;ve been writing SF for so long that <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5833461\/how-to-sell-your-readers-on-your-storys-main-ideas\" target=\"_blank\">this article<\/a> sounds a little obvious to me, but some of the points do need to be borne in mind by writers new to the field, particularly #3. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2011\/sep\/02\/yvonne-cow-caught-three-months\" target=\"_blank\">This<\/a> was Big News in Germany. Those people need to get out more.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2011\/09\/02\/pigorass-quadruped-robot-baby-steps-past-aibos-grave-video\/\" target=\"_blank\">I&#8217;m not sure what it is either<\/a>, but if you&#8217;re going to cite its name as PIGORASS, you&#8217;d really better expand the acronym.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wired has a nice piece on the 1859 Carrington Event; basically, the strongest solar storm in the last 500 years, assuming ice core data is a reliable proxy for storm strength. Early landline telegraph operators actually disconnected their batteries and passed traffic solely on power induced in the lines by solar activity. Whew. Now that&#8217;s [&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":[74,21,45,43,113,18,20],"class_list":["post-2114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-education","tag-electronics","tag-ham-radio","tag-humor","tag-robotics","tag-sf","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114","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=2114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2115,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114\/revisions\/2115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}