{"id":3137,"date":"2014-05-13T10:25:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T16:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3137"},"modified":"2014-05-13T11:00:01","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T17:00:01","slug":"odd-lots-253","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3137","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The forms are in place. The new roadbase fill has been leveled and compacted, and the rebar laid. Concrete should be here in less than an hour. Damn, we&#8217;re ready.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phdcomics.com\/comics\/archive.php?comicid=1174\" target=\"_blank\">a concise (and hilarious) summary of everything wrong with science journalism<\/a>, which is (alas) pretty much everything.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/the-physics-arxiv-blog\/898b104158d\" target=\"_blank\">If the human mind can&#8217;t be modeled, it can&#8217;t be emulated<\/a>. Which makes me wonder what sort of non-human intelligence we may be able to create computationlly, and whether we&#8217;d recognize it as intelligence if we did.<\/li>\n<li>One of my very favorite scientists, the Vatican Observatory&#8217;s Dr. Guy Consolmagno, said four years ago that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/religion\/the-pope\/8009299\/Pope-Benedict-XVIs-astronomer-the-Catholic-Church-welcomes-aliens.html\" target=\"_blank\">if aliens come to Earth and ask to be baptised, the Church would be happy to do it<\/a>&#8211;but <em>only<\/em> if they asked. There are theological questions here: Would all aliens be subject to original sin? Would each world have its own Incarnation? James Blish explored this a little (if in a rather 50s way) in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A_Case_of_Conscience\" target=\"_blank\">A Case of Conscience<\/a><\/em> . Now Pope Francis has apparently reiterated it on the Vatican news site.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2014\/05\/to-remember-a-lecture-better-take-notes-by-hand\/361478\/\" target=\"_blank\">Students remember lectures better when they take notes in longhand<\/a>. I&#8217;ve noticed this effect myself, and it&#8217;s real. The article suggests that writing notes longhand requires you to process information before writing it down, but that&#8217;s true of keyboarding as well. I admit I don&#8217;t take a lot of longhand notes anymore, but it&#8217;s also true that keyboarding and presenting aloud seem to use entirely separate parts of my mind. (I tried to write a story once by dictating into Dragon Naturally Speaking&#8230;and it just didn&#8217;t work.)<\/li>\n<li>In crafting parody, I&#8217;ve run afoul of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Poe's_law\" target=\"_blank\">Poe&#8217;s Law<\/a> more than once. Far too many people are so dumb they can&#8217;t detect hit-you-with-a-shovel sarcasm when they see it. (Thanks to Jim Mischel for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>I just ordered <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1451624425\/\">this<\/a>. Will review when I&#8217;ve had a chance to devour and digest it. Fat has certainly been good for me, judging by my weight and blood numbers since I stopped fearing it.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.medicalnewstoday.com\/articles\/276519.php\" target=\"_blank\">Coffee is good for eye health<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/health.yahoo.net\/experts\/dayinhealth\/coffee-linked-vision-loss\" target=\"_blank\">Isn&#8217;t it<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2014\/04\/how-to-make-wine-taste-good\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wine is a lot more complicated than you probably thought<\/a>, and a <em>whole lot<\/em> less romantic. Nay, it&#8217;s industrial, almost&#8230;urban.<\/li>\n<li>And <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/black-dog-syndrome-teaches-us-something-very-important-1575185077\" target=\"_blank\">still more reasons to view so-called studies with extreme caution<\/a>. If you want to pass off an agenda or some sort of ideological\/political\/hate campaign, the best way to do it these days is hang a sign on it that says, &#8220;Trust me! I&#8217;m <em>Science<\/em>!&#8221; (Thanks to Damon Smithwick for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>And if you&#8217;ve ever used a graph to try to prove something, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tylervigen.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">this may give you pause<\/a>. (Thanks to Roberta Crownover for the link.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The forms are in place. The new roadbase fill has been leveled and compacted, and the rebar laid. Concrete should be here in less than an hour. Damn, we&#8217;re ready. Here&#8217;s a concise (and hilarious) summary of everything wrong with science journalism, which is (alas) pretty much everything. If the human mind can&#8217;t be modeled, [&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":[39,42,54,18,13],"class_list":["post-3137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-health","tag-religion","tag-science","tag-sf","tag-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137","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=3137"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3153,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions\/3153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}