{"id":3940,"date":"2017-08-25T14:08:47","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T20:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3940"},"modified":"2017-08-25T14:08:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-25T20:08:46","slug":"odd-lots-310","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3940","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Where have I been? Chasing eclipses and home improvement contractors, for the most part. We found that a lot of people will cut down   a diseased tree. The tricky part is finding someone who can dig up the stump. Also, I&#39;ve been posting very short items on Facebook   that in ancient times (Contra is now 19 years old, after all) would have been separate Contra entries. Finally, I&#39;ve been out of   sorts for other, darker reasons. (See below.)   <\/li>\n<li>I will post a long-form entry on the recent total solar eclipse once my colleagues and I put together a cloud site for sharing our   photos.   <\/li>\n<li>Intriguing gadget: <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/they-should-sell-these-brilliant-paper-flashlights-in-g-1798434058\" target=\"_blank\">      A flashlight basically printed on a sheet of paper, with two button cells and seven LED lights connected to the printed pattern<\/a>.      Rolling it up closes the circuit and lights the LEDs. But wait&#8230;it gets better: Because of the way the pattern is printed, the      tighter you roll it, the brighter the light. Now, what magazine will be the first to include a flashlight to read it by on camping      trips, bound in as the back cover?   <\/li>\n<li>The sugar industry bribed Harvard University researchers to shift the blame for obesity from sugar to fat. <a href=   \"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2016\/09\/12\/sugar-industry-harvard-research\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#39;s the backstory<\/a>. I guess it   wasn&#39;t all Ancel Keys&#39; fault. He had lots of help from some <em>very<\/em> high places. As a direct result of that bribery,   millions of people grew diabetic and died sooner than they should have. How can we guarantee that such things will never happen again?   I&#39;ll hear your suggestions if you have them; I&#39;m preparing a longer Contra entry on the topic.   <\/li>\n<li>Heh. <a href=   \"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/Health_News\/2017\/07\/21\/Study-Regular-soda-causes-body-to-store-more-fat-after-high-protein-meals\/9501500662710\/\"   target=\"_blank\">You don&#39;t escape the fattening effects of sugared sodas by drinking them with a high-protein meal<\/a>. Sugar   basically ruins everything.   <\/li>\n<li>Now that it has bought up Whole Foods, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/amazon-moving-swiftly-to-cut-prices-at-whole-foods\/\"   target=\"_blank\">Amazon is wasting no time cutting prices at the upscale food retailer<\/a>, known among its critics as &quot;Whole   Paycheck.&quot; (Thanks to Instapundit for the link.)   <\/li>\n<li>      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.azcentral.com\/story\/opinion\/op-ed\/2017\/08\/11\/offended-so-what-gabriel\/550596001\/\" target=\"_blank\">Great little      rant from Jon Gabriel about weaponized offense-taking<\/a>. In brief: That gun don&#39;t fire in the direction you think, bro.   <\/li>\n<li>From the Words-I-Didn&#39;t-Know-Until-Yesterday Department: <em>Sortilege<\/em>, meaning divination (i.e., the prediction of the   future) by the drawing of an item or items from a collection. This includes the casting of bones or dice. I always understood this as   <em>cleromancy<\/em>, but as I&#39;ve discovered, every damfool item in the occult toolkit has at least six names.   <\/li>\n<li>      <a href=      \"https:\/\/m.charlestoncitypaper.com\/charleston\/scientists-have-unearthed-ancient-artifacts-that-are-upending-the-history-of-mankind\/Content?oid=4092912\"      target=\"_blank\">Good long-form article on the Clovis people<\/a>, and the mysterious (and still disputed) people who were here in      North America before them.   <\/li>\n<li>      <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/innovation\/trying-find-healthy-diet-look-your-genes-n795841\" target=\"_blank\">There is now a      service that will test you for genes specifically affecting nutrition<\/a>, and provide advice based on the results. This includes      things like food sensitivities and ideal diet. Yes, I&#39;m skeptical, but at least we&#39;ve begun to move away from the &quot;one      advice fits all&quot; fallacy. The more I research, the more I discover that individual differences matter crucially in almost every      facet of human health. This has various implications for healthcare, none of them good.   <\/li>\n<li>Nice short sociology piece: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/99b1de70-8330-11e7-a4ce-15b2513cb3ff\" target=\"_blank\">We actually   have two different elites vying for control of our society, the moneyed and the cultured<\/a>. My take: Neither is fit to rule.   <\/li>\n<li>      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/450739\/free-speech-attacks-come-both-sides\" target=\"_blank\">Tribalism will be the end      of our culture unless we find some way to eliminate it<\/a>. My thought: criminalize not speech, but attempts to suppress speech. Fine      universities heavily for failing to control protesting crowds outside a legitimate event, especially once violence erupts.   <\/li>\n<li>In connection with that, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/view\/articles\/2017-08-22\/we-live-in-fear-of-the-online-mobs\" target=   \"_blank\">a fine essay by Megan McArdle on the dangers of online mob terrorism<\/a>.   <\/li>\n<li>It&#39;s not just online. <a href=   \"http:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/19949\/innocent-colorado-man-stabbed-over-his-neo-nazi-emily-zanotti\" target=\"_blank\">Just a few days ago,   some crackpot pulled a Denver man out of his car and tried to stab him because the psycho thought his haircut made him look like a   Nazi<\/a>. That probably wasn&#39;t Antifa, but it&#39;s a mindset Antifa popularized; <a href=   \"http:\/\/www.theblaze.com\/news\/2017\/05\/26\/professor-arrested-on-suspicion-of-assaulting-trump-supporters-with-metal-bike-lock-in-berkeley\/\"      target=\"_blank\">recall the Antifa philosophy professor who hid behind some women, then jumped out and hit a man from behind with a      huge bike U-lock<\/a>&#8230;and went on to hit six other people with the same lock.   <\/li>\n<li>No, I don&#39;t generally cover such political ructions here, but this recent violence rattled me a little, and brought to mind   <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Red-Guards\" target=\"_blank\">China&#39;s Red Guards<\/a> of the 1966-1975 timeframe. Want Red   Guards? Because Antifa is how you get Red Guards.   <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Where have I been? Chasing eclipses and home improvement contractors, for the most part. We found that a lot of people will cut down a diseased tree. The tricky part is finding someone who can dig up the stump. Also, I&#39;ve been posting very short items on Facebook that in ancient times (Contra is now [&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":[99,37,161,39,44,73,35,46],"class_list":["post-3940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-anthropology","tag-food","tag-gadgets","tag-health","tag-history","tag-language","tag-politics","tag-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940","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=3940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3941,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940\/revisions\/3941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}