{"id":5381,"date":"2025-04-09T11:50:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T18:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5381"},"modified":"2025-04-09T11:50:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T18:50:53","slug":"odd-lots-356","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5381","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I wrote about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4612\" target=\"_blank\">the dearth of color variety in cars<\/a> a few years back. This morning I ran across <a href=\"https:\/\/christophercook.substack.com\/p\/color-drained-world-car-colors-gray-socialism-monochrome\" target=\"_blank\">an article about the same topic<\/a>. And not only in cars, but in clothes and much else. He sees color variety as way down, along with color saturation. <\/li>\n<li>He may be on to something: There\u2019s a new style of houses being built here in our area that I refer to as \u201cEtruscan tombs\u201d because they\u2019re entirely white and all right angles, without curves or any kind of ornamentation. They look like they\u2019re made of limestone or white marble:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/BoxyWhiteHouse.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"BoxyWhiteHouse\" style=\"display: inline; background-image: none;\" border=\"0\" alt=\"BoxyWhiteHouse\" src=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/BoxyWhiteHouse_thumb.jpg\" width=\"540\" height=\"357\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>And cars, well, it\u2019s not all bad news. Carol and I are seeing a lot more colors in cars around town these days, and the majority are bright and sometimes electric blue. But there are also yellows and oranges; not as many as blues but <em>way<\/em> more than we saw four or five years ago.<\/li>\n<li>By now I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard the buzz about \u201cde-extincting\u201d the dire wolf. I was suspicious of that claim, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/the-dire-wolf-isnt-back-but-heres-what-de-extinction-tech-can-actually-do\/\" target=\"_blank\">and turns out I\u2019m right<\/a>: What the genetic engineering firm did was modify gray wolf genes to make them look like what we think dire wolves looked like. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/company-seeking-to-resurrect-the-woolly-mammoth-creates-a-woolly-mouse\/\" target=\"_blank\">The same firm created \u201cwoolly mice\u201d<\/a> through a more authentic process, by injecting a few recovered woolly mammoth genes into lab mice. Whether this is a good idea I\u2019m not sure. We\u2019ll see how far they can take it.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5267\" target=\"_blank\">As I wrote about sometime back<\/a>, we dodged what might have been global extinction in the thick of the last ice age, when CO2 levels fell to the edge of what could support plant life on Earth. <a href=\"https:\/\/710wor.iheart.com\/featured\/mark-simone\/content\/2019-10-08-the-list-of-120-years-of-climate-scares-by-scientists\/\" target=\"_blank\">The claims of the climate doomscreamers haven\u2019t panned out<\/a>, and now we\u2019re discovering that <a href=\"https:\/\/wattsupwiththat.com\/2025\/04\/07\/fresh-evidence-emerges-that-global-vegetation-growth-reaches-new-highs-due-to-increased-co2-fertilisation\/\" target=\"_blank\">more CO2 in the atmosphere has led to a new greening peak, enlarging crops and reducing deserts<\/a>. This looks like a big win to me.<\/li>\n<li>Computer modeling has solved one of <em>man<\/em>kind\u2019s greatest problems, <a href=\"https:\/\/studyfinds.org\/physics-solves-one-of-mans-biggest-problems-urinal-splashing\/\" target=\"_blank\">what some call \u201ctinkle sprinkle\u201d: urine splashing to one side of a urinal or another<\/a>, getting on the floor, on adjacent urinal users, or on the user himself. The designs are clever and interesting in a number of ways, and one has to wonder what took us so long.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote about the dearth of color variety in cars a few years back. This morning I ran across an article about the same topic. And not only in cars, but in clothes and much else. He sees color variety as way down, along with color saturation. He may be on to something: There\u2019s a [&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":[227,159,267],"class_list":["post-5381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-climate","tag-genetics","tag-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5381","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=5381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5382,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5381\/revisions\/5382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}