{"id":3168,"date":"2014-05-18T19:55:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T01:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3168"},"modified":"2014-05-23T07:50:36","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T13:50:36","slug":"odd-lots-254","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3168","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Our new concrete gets its sealer coat tomorrow, and once it dries it&#8217;ll be (finally!) done. I&#8217;ll post a photo. So far we think it&#8217;s gorgeous.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vincelewis.net\/unsoldcars.html\" target= \"_blank\">This article<\/a> has been shared again and again and again on Facebook, and it caught my attention because it echoes <a href= \"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=962\" target= \"_blank\">something I wrote about in 2009<\/a>: That because our stuff is lasting longer, we need less stuff, be it forks or cars. And the cars are piling up&#8230;or are they? Alas, the article is nonsense (it did smell a little funny to me) and <a href= \"http:\/\/jalopnik.com\/that-zero-hedge-article-on-unsold-cars-is-bullshit-1578124255\" target=\"_blank\">here&#8217;s the point-by-point takedown<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s <a href= \"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3278644\/\" target= \"_blank\">the best detailed article on bacteriophage therapy I&#8217;ve seen in quite awhile<\/a>. It&#8217;s a hard read, but a good one. Sooner or later, as antibiotics fail us one by one, we&#8217;re going to have to go this way. (<a href= \"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-Rq2g4QCSaJA\/UzbuhlgiWXI\/AAAAAAAACaw\/TtYx0Qo0tfE\/s1600\/T4VirusSA.gif\" target=\"_blank\">Phages look very cool, as well<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<li>The scientific method wins again: We thought we knew the physics behind same-material static electricity. <a href= \"http:\/\/news.sciencemag.org\/chemistry\/2014\/05\/static-electricity-defies-simple-explanation\" target=\"_blank\">We were wrong<\/a>. Doubt really does lie at the very heart of science, in that if we don&#8217;t doubt what we think we know, we have no chance of finding our mistakes.<\/li>\n<li>Now that eggs aren&#8217;t evil anymore, it&#8217;s worth exploring all the various ways to prepare them. If you like hard-boiled eggs, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seriouseats.com\/2014\/05\/the-secrets-to-peeling-hard-boiled-eggs.html\" target=\"_blank\">here&#8217;s the best explanation I&#8217;ve seen<\/a> of how to boil them so that they&#8217;ll peel easily and without divots.<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"http:\/\/news.softpedia.com\/news\/Adobe-Creative-Cloud-Is-Down-Worldwide-442237.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Adobe&#8217;s Creative Cloud was down for some time<\/a>. The issue&#8217;s been resolved, but it just confirms my ancient suspicion that putting everything on the cloud is a <em>really<\/em> bad idea. <em>If I can&#8217;t access my software, I can&#8217;t work<\/em>. Pretty much end of story.<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2014\/may\/14\/sleep-life-sleeplessness-blue-light-computers-early-death\" target=\"_blank\">Blue light keeps you awake<\/a>. Staying awake shortens your life. So as the day winds down, Turn the Damned Thing Off. Then read a book until you&#8217;re sleepy. I recommend any substantial history book, with a special nod to histories of the Byzantine Empire. (Thanks to Dermot Dobson for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.microminiatures.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">This is the company<\/a> that makes the machines that play the songs on ice cream trucks. Or at least the ones in the UK.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our new concrete gets its sealer coat tomorrow, and once it dries it&#8217;ll be (finally!) done. I&#8217;ll post a photo. So far we think it&#8217;s gorgeous. This article has been shared again and again and again on Facebook, and it caught my attention because it echoes something I wrote about in 2009: That because our [&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":[37,39,116,49,54,14],"class_list":["post-3168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-food","tag-health","tag-house","tag-music","tag-science","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168","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=3168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3171,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions\/3171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}