{"id":455,"date":"2008-03-14T12:29:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T16:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=455"},"modified":"2009-01-14T22:49:52","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T02:49:52","slug":"odd-lots-42","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=455","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>While chasing an interesting &#8220;out of the blue&#8221; idea                 that came to me while exercising the other day, I happened upon                 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rvsurplussalvage.com\/catalog\/display.php?category_id=29\">an                 RV surplus shop<\/a>. Not surprisingly, it&apos;s in Elkhart, Indiana                 (Ground Zero for the American RV industry) and it sells leftovers                 and overstocks of RV parts and interior furniture. If I were to                 want to built a custom RV dinette table with a built-in keyboard,                 well, this might be the place to start.<\/li>\n<li>Good grief: Has Big Media run out of Republicans to torment?                 ABC News posted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abcnews.go.com\/Blotter\/story?id=4443788&amp;page=1\">this                 story<\/a> about the pastor of Obama&apos;s Chicago church, who repeatedly                 condemns the US in his sermons and tells his people that they                 should be singing &#8220;God Damn America&#8221; instead of &#8220;God                 Bless America.&#8221; Expect those sermons (which are offered for                 sale by the church) to become <i>very<\/i> popular in coming months.<\/li>\n<li>Illinois is famous for a lot of things, but being the historical                 capital of manufacturing of fraternal organization initiation                 and hazing equipment is not one of them. However, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.demoulin.com\/\">the                 De Moulin Company<\/a> of Greenville, Illinois, now known for making                 band uniforms, used to do a big and almost unimaginably bizarre                 business manufacturing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phoenixmasonry.org\/masonicmuseum\/demoulin\/index.htm\">expensive                 gag items used to make new Masons and Elks feel like one of the                 gang<\/a>. The precise psychology here is obscure to me (the last                 remotely fraternal organization I joined was the Boy Scouts) but                 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phoenixmasonry.org\/masonicmuseum\/demoulin\/ferris_wheel_coaster_goat.htm\">the                 devices are just insane<\/a>. Browse and boggle.<\/li>\n<li>Here&apos;s <a href=\"http:\/\/astrosystems.biz\/\">another source<\/a>                 for home-made telescope optics and <a href=\"http:\/\/astrosystems.biz\/telekits.htm\">truss                 telescope kits<\/a> up to 32&#8243; in clear aperature. Even though                 I&apos;m not a big Dobsonian fan, the scopes look good, and if you                 want light-gathering power above all else something like this                 is as good as you&apos;re going to do short of a full-concrete observatory.                 The optics are not cheap, <a href=\"http:\/\/astrosystems.biz\/Ostahowski.htm\">but                 they&apos;re good<\/a>. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Also from Pete comes a link to a site selling <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deutscheoptik.com\/catalog\/product_info.php?cPath=7&amp;products_id=768\">Swiss                 Army Ohmmeters<\/a>. Should the Swiss Army encounter resistance,                 well, they&apos;ll be ready.<\/li>\n<li>Mike Burton (who worked in the industry for some time) wrote                 to say that &#8220;double shot&#8221; keyboards are no longer produced                 due to their expense. A double-shot keyboard is one in which the                 keycaps are molded in two steps: One step to mold the body of                 the cap, with a void in the shape of the letter, and a second                 to fill the void with black plastic. Such keycaps never lose their                 legends, like my decal-equipped Avant Stellar is now doing at                 great speed. I guess I had better stock up on period Northgates.<\/li>\n<li>We have evidently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nichd.nih.gov\/news\/releases\/gene.cfm\">found                 the gene that triggers the onset of puberty<\/a>. One wonders what                 suppressing this gene would do long-term. What would be the psychology                 of a 75-year-old boy who had never gone through puberty? Larry                 Niven toyed with the idea in <i>World Out of Time<\/i>, speculating                 that stopping puberty would stop aging, but I intuit that much                 more could be done with it. Would I give up sex for a shot at                 becoming immortal? (Answer from this side of the fence: No. Ask                 me in 1962 and you might have gotten a different answer.) Much                 depends on whether emotional maturity is a process inherent in                 or only affected by puberty. Sooner or later some renegade will                 try this, and we&apos;ll know.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While chasing an interesting &#8220;out of the blue&#8221; idea that came to me while exercising the other day, I happened upon an RV surplus shop. Not surprisingly, it&apos;s in Elkhart, Indiana (Ground Zero for the American RV industry) and it sells leftovers and overstocks of RV parts and interior furniture. If I were to want [&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":[15,35,54,68],"class_list":["post-455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-hardware","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-telescopes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455","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=455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}