{"id":488,"date":"2008-02-12T16:50:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T20:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=488"},"modified":"2009-01-14T23:21:44","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T03:21:44","slug":"odd-lots-44","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=488","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Robert Jastrow, the well-known NASA space popularizer, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/02\/12\/science\/space\/12jastrow.html?_r=2&amp;ref=us&amp;oref=slogin&amp;oref=slogin\">has                 left us, at age 82<\/a>. My copy of <i>Red Giants and White Dwarfs<\/i>                 is in pieces from overuse, but as with Jastrow himself, I can                 only say: Mission accomplished.<\/li>\n<li>I stumbled upon <a href=\"http:\/\/bp2.blogger.com\/_Eiwce13X738\/R7FPLGdf7ZI\/AAAAAAAABls\/e4razkQzJIU\/s1600-h\/Besnard_Decoration_for_a_ceiling.jpg\">an                 interesting piece of art<\/a> today (while following an unrelated                 link sent by Pete Albrecht) by the <a href=\"http:\/\/query.nytimes.com\/mem\/archive-free\/pdf?res=9A04E0DD133BE633A25751C0A9649C946296D6CF\">late                 French Impressionist Albert Besnard<\/a>. Rather too casually entitled                 &#8220;Decoration for a Ceiling,&#8221; to me it suggests something                 altogether more cosmic: The reunion of all things and all people                 with God at the end of time. As Pete suggested for a caption:                 &#8220;Honey, I picked up your wings from the cleaners.&#8221; (And                 how about using it as a book cover? Right there in the middle                 is space for a title!)<\/li>\n<li>D-Stix are amazingly rare on eBay (considering all the rest                 of the bizarre and obscure crap that I see there regularly) but                 today I finally scored the 464-piece set from the mid-1960s, and                 for only $10 at that. I&apos;ve mentioned D-Stix here on Contra in                 the past, and on our second date, Carol and I flew a tetrahedral                 kite that I had made out of D-Stix. Building a replica of that kite                 has been on my do-it list for some years now. All I have to do now                 is find some purple madras tissue paper&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Jim Strickland sent me a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plasmatweeter.de\/\">a                 nice page from a German chap (it&apos;s in English) who has done considerable                 work with spark speakers<\/a>. This isn&apos;t quite a flame speaker                 as I saw one in 1969 (which used an ionized propane torch flame)                 but is more like a modulated Tesla coil.<\/li>\n<li>Also from Jim (in honor of the Westminster Dog Show, which ran                 last night) is <a href=\"http:\/\/ihasahotdog.com\/2008\/02\/01\/loldogs-cute-puppy-pictures-this-is-biff\/\">an                 entry from what might as well be LOLDogs<\/a>. Alas, the bichon                 didn&apos;t win his group last night. (There are too many poodles in                 the world, and not enough melted butter&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li>Still again from Jim is a fascinating <a href=\"http:\/\/radar.oreilly.com\/archives\/2008\/02\/wired_news_from.html\">short                 history of the Teletype<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>While we&apos;re talking ancient communication technologies, I finally                 remembered to link to <a href=\"http:\/\/scard.buffnet.net\/pages\/tele\/wurules1866\/92code.html\">a                 summary of Western Union&apos;s &#8220;92 code,&#8221;<\/a> which is a                 list of 19th century telegrapher&apos;s numeric abbreviations that                 includes the &apos;&apos;&#8211;73&#8211;&#8221; that has been my email signature since                 my MCI Mail days in the early 80s. This is as good a summary as                 I&apos;ve found, but it&apos;s missing a few codes that I&apos;ve heard, like                 &#8211;86&#8211; which is short for &#8220;We are out of&#8230;&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>And further in that same direction, here&apos;s <a href=\"http:\/\/wireless.berkeley.edu\/services\/10codes.shtml\">as                 good a list as I&apos;ve seen of the 10-codes<\/a> used by CBers, police,                 and, of course, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.findagrave.com\/cgi-bin\/fg.cgi?page=gr&amp;GRid=1740\">Broderick                 Crawford<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Jastrow, the well-known NASA space popularizer, has left us, at age 82. My copy of Red Giants and White Dwarfs is in pieces from overuse, but as with Jastrow himself, I can only say: Mission accomplished. I stumbled upon an interesting piece of art today (while following an unrelated link sent by Pete Albrecht) [&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":[38,71,15,44,43],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-dogs","tag-eulogies","tag-hardware","tag-history","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","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=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":500,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}