{"id":1135,"date":"2010-02-19T18:51:07","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T22:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1135"},"modified":"2010-02-19T18:54:49","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T22:54:49","slug":"odd-lots-102","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1135","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>Today&#8217;s Odd Lots is a rare (nay, to this date unique) all-video edition. I dislike TV sufficiently so that that&#8217;s a contrarian act all by itself.<\/li>\n<li>To begin: We used to make <a href=\"http:\/\/www.instructables.com\/id\/Popsicle-Stick-Bomb\/\">five-stick &#8220;popsicle bombs&#8221;<\/a> on the fourth-grade playground, and compete to see whose bombs would toss sticks the farthest. (I actually devised a 4-stick bomb, but nobody seemed impressed. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.framebomb.com\/gallery.html\">The technology has clearly advanced since 1961<\/a>.) Anyway: <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2010\/02\/successor_to_domino_toppling_needs.html\">Here&#8217;s a linearly detonating, 2,250-stick popsicle bomb<\/a>, and it is indeed a thing of beauty.<\/li>\n<li>While we&#8217;re blowing things up, consider <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ozfzr3kkp_4\">this unfortunate attempt to demolish what appears to be an apartment building molded of solid concrete<\/a>. They should feel fortunate that the building had not been erected on even a mild slope, or it would simply have rolled down the hill until it struck something bigger and denser than it was. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>I guess if you&#8217;re going to blow a demolition, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fiNrzmbdC1Q&amp;\">do it this way<\/a>. Then you either buy more dynamite, or advertise it as a tourist attraction.<\/li>\n<li>And this may be the most amazing video clip I&#8217;ve seen in <em>years<\/em>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SsDEfu8s1Lw\">An Atlas booster breaking the sound barrier at just about the altitude where ice crystals responsible for sundogs form<\/a>. Watch what happens to the sundog! (Thanks to Mary Lynn Johnson for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Admittedly this is a hybrid, but don&#8217;t miss the video if you&#8217;re a train freak. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/technology\/transportation\/4345689.html\">That double-stacked consist is 18,000 feet long<\/a>, propelled by what is essentially a local-area network of nine computer-controlled diesel-electric locomotives distributed evenly among the cars and operated by one guy in the cab of the lead engine. (Thanks to Bruce Baker for the link.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Odd Lots is a rare (nay, to this date unique) all-video edition. I dislike TV sufficiently so that that&#8217;s a contrarian act all by itself. To begin: We used to make five-stick &#8220;popsicle bombs&#8221; on the fourth-grade playground, and compete to see whose bombs would toss sticks the farthest. (I actually devised a 4-stick [&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":[151,54,56],"class_list":["post-1135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-memoir","tag-science","tag-trains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1135"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1137,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions\/1137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}