Jeff Duntemann's Contrapositive Diary Rotating Header Image

June 6th, 2011:

Odd Lots

  • Here’s another take on the EasyBits GO debacle, from a guy who used to work at Easybits. Even if it’s not a trojan, it’s still crapware, and careless crapware at that. The Microsoft connection is intriguing: MS will soon be reviewing the entire Skype ecosystem, and may decide to do some decontamination. I don’t think it will go well for EasyBits.
  • Down in the trenches in the Carb Wars, people who yell, “A calorie is a calorie! It’s just the laws of thermodynamics!” don’t understand thermodynamics. I’ve known this for years. Here’s a good explanation. (Thanks to David Stafford for the link.)
  • Mike Reith saw a pure white squirrel awhile back, up near Denver. I had never heard of non-albino white squirrels before, but they exist, and appear to be spreading due to evolutionary selection–by humans.
  • Maybe it wasn’t us who extinctified the Pleistocene megafauna. (Or at least our paleolithic ancestors.) Maybe it was the Sun. Scary business. (Thanks to Jim Strickland for the link.)
  • From the Words-I-Didn’t-Know-Until-Last-Week Department: prosopagnosia, the inability to recognizes faces or familiar objects. (Thanks to Bruce Baker for calling it to my attention.)
  • From Pete Albrecht comes a link to a video of a train wreck caused by a tornado–with the wrinkle that the wreck is filmed from a security cam on one of the freight cars. Toward the end we see a derailed tanker striking sparks as it’s dragged against the rails. Made me wonder what would have happened had it been full of LP gas…
  • Forgive the vulgarity and the pervasive comics/movies influence, but this is a point that needs to be made, and textual fiction is no exception. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)
  • I like sprouts. I haven’t eaten them for ten years. Here’s why. Alas, being organic doesn’t help. (Thanks once again to Pete.)
  • Here’s a cogent (and funny) illustration of a great deal of what’s wrong with science these days. Hint: It’s not science. Most of the problem is the butthead festival we call the media. (The rest is the grant system.)