{"id":2786,"date":"2013-03-02T20:38:05","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T03:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2786"},"modified":"2013-03-02T20:38:10","modified_gmt":"2013-03-03T03:38:10","slug":"odd-lots-218","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2786","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I just finished writing an SF novel (now in the final polishing stage) that postulates robots who throw things so precisely that there is no longer a need for assembly lines. Everything the factory deals with (parts, subsystems, finished items) are thrown from one place on the floor to another. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gizmag.com\/bigdog-grabs-lifts-throws-new-arm\/26473\/\" target=\"_blank\">The well-known Big Dog robot recently learned how to throw cinder blocks thirty feet<\/a>. Once two can play catch with cinder blocks, I&#8217;ll call it a score.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.religionnews.com\/2013\/02\/25\/march-madness-make-your-picks-in-the-vaticans-sweet-sistine-brackets\/\" target=\"_blank\">March Madness, Pope-style<\/a>. In my unfinished (still) novel <em>Old Catholics<\/em>, Benedict&#8217;s successor is a reactionary Brazilian. Following the Brazilian is Chicago&#8217;s Cardinal Peter Paul Luchetti, born in Rome, New York&#8230;making him <a href=\"http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2013\/02\/16\/peter-the-roman\/\" target=\"_blank\">Malachy&#8217;s Peter the Roman<\/a>. Now Benedict has gone and messed up the sequence by resigning before I could get that story into print.<\/li>\n<li>More pope-related tinfoil-hat stuff: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pope_John_XX\" target=\"_blank\">There was no Pope John XX<\/a>. Could Pope John XX have been <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pope_Joan\" target=\"_blank\">Pope Joan?<\/a> We later made up for the John shortage by having <em>two<\/em> Pope John XXIIIs. Alas, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Antipope_John_XXIII\" target=\"_blank\">the first one was a pirate and a highwayman<\/a>, and had committed every sin we knew about at the time. We call him an antipope, but the papacy was such a mess in 1410 that he had as good a claim as anybody. Fortunately, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pope_John_XXIII\" target=\"_blank\">the second Pope John XXIII<\/a> was arguably the best pope who ever lived. Funny how that works.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/yro.slashdot.org\/story\/13\/02\/28\/1551206\/new-bill-would-require-patent-trolls-to-pay-defendants-attorneys\" target=\"_blank\">This may not pass<\/a>, but a law limiting the ability of non-practicing patent trolls to extort risk-free would be a damned fine first step in patent reform.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, a useful infographic: <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5987740\/heres-how-long-food-can-last-in-the-pantry-refrigerator-and-freezer\" target=\"_blank\">How long food lasts at room temps, in the fridge, or in the freezer.<\/a> I didn&#8217;t know you&#8217;re not supposed to freeze potatoes.<\/li>\n<li>I used to think I was nuts for seeing faces in random patterns on our textured walls. Maybe not. We&#8217;re good at recognizing faces, which suggests that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darkroastedblend.com\/2011\/06\/unintentional-faces-in-objects.html\" target=\"_blank\">if a pattern can be turned into a face by our mental machinery, it will<\/a>. Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darkroastedblend.com\/2012\/09\/unintentional-faces-in-objects-part-2.html\" target=\"_blank\">even more<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>In the spring of 1970, I bought a novelty gas discharge bulb at a headshop (Sunny&#8217;s, at Harlem &amp; Foster in Chicago) and built a little lamp around it for Carol. The bulb was an Aerolux bulb, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.medici-giovanni.com\/Noelle\/aerolux.html\" target=\"_blank\">here&#8217;s a site giving the product history and some examples<\/a>. The sixth image (purple swallow amidst green foliage) is the exact bulb I used.<\/li>\n<li>While looking around at other uses of the word &#8220;drumlin,&#8221; I ran across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.azlyrics.com\/lyrics\/twodoorcinemaclub\/sun.html\" target=\"_blank\">a current pop song from Two-Door Cinema Club<\/a>. I&#8217;m willing to guess that it&#8217;s the only Billboard-charted song containing the word, but I&#8217;d love to be proven wrong.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished writing an SF novel (now in the final polishing stage) that postulates robots who throw things so precisely that there is no longer a need for assembly lines. Everything the factory deals with (parts, subsystems, finished items) are thrown from one place on the floor to another. The well-known Big Dog robot [&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":[37,46,42,113,18,20],"class_list":["post-2786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-food","tag-psychology","tag-religion","tag-robotics","tag-sf","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2786","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=2786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}