{"id":116,"date":"2008-11-26T13:03:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-26T17:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=116"},"modified":"2008-12-13T22:34:29","modified_gmt":"2008-12-14T02:34:29","slug":"odd-lots-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Yesterday&apos;s <i>Wall Street Journal<\/i> and <i>New York Times<\/i>                  (and many other outlets) reported that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/11\/25\/books\/25publish.html?_r=1&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;oref=slogin&amp;ref=business&amp;adxnnlx=1227716089-p6qNTPgESfChCmRww6M+Vw\">the                  Houghton-Mifflin trade division will be &#8220;temporarily&#8221;                  suspending acquisitions of new books<\/a>. (The textbook division,                  which provides most of the company&apos;s revenues, is not involved.)                  This comes in the wake of H-M&apos;s purchase by an Irish software                  company last year. I applaud; there are too many books chasing                  too few readers, and monster publishers are tempted to &#8220;buy&#8221;                  store space with co-op budgets that small publishers cannot afford,                  while publishing whatever they can find just to meet a preset                  publishing program.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2204372\/\">Here&apos;s a hilarious                  takedown of one of the most precious and irritating new-media                  types I&apos;ve ever had the misfortune to read<\/a>\u2014with, as a                  bonus, a rare example of the use of the word &#8220;gnomic&#8221;                  in its classical sense.<\/li>\n<li>And while we&apos;re on Slate, here&apos;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2204988\/\">a                  slightly lightweight item on the psychology of car-horn honking<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Computer-hardware-as-tasteless-joke is something I&apos;ve not seen                  before, but <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wired.com\/gadgets\/2008\/11\/keyboard-for-bl.html\">these                  guys<\/a> certainly get credit for balls&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;and so do <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wnd.com\/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&amp;pageId=81966\">people                  who rant and rage against grade-school Pilgrims-and-Indians pageants<\/a>,                  especially when there are plenty of American Indians who support                  them. (School administrators seem to exile balls to the school                  playground in such cases&#8230;but never mind.) <\/li>\n<li>Here&apos;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americancivicliteracy.org\/resources\/quiz.aspx\">an                  interesting but fairly tough 33-question quiz on American history                  and civics<\/a>. I scored 100% without &#8220;peeking,&#8221; but                  I also read history as a hobby and actually <i>think<\/i> about                  politics rather than blindly wave a tribal banner. Let&apos;s say that                  I wouldn&apos;t have done this well had I taken the quiz right after                  my mostly indifferent college education. I had to guess on one                  question (correctly) and probe <i>really<\/i> stale memories for                  another. Can you guess which two questions I had trouble with?                  (Thanks to Terry Dullmaier for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>While trying to be a Nice Guy, I bought a bunch of CFLs after                  they became politically correct, only to see every damned one                  of them burn out in about six weeks. I lose a lot of filaments                  here\u2014must be the altitude, or top secret Air Force projects                  at nearby NORAD\u2014but incandescents go at least six months                  in the same exact sockets. Finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edn.com\/article\/CA6607201.html\">an                  article in the engineering press about why CFLs aren&apos;t necessarily                  a gift from the angels<\/a>. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Where can you get &#8220;extra&#8221; Lego bricks without buying                  sets full of stuff you don&apos;t want? (This was and remains a serious                  challenge for Meccano\/Erector hobbyists.) One word: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bricklink.com\/\">Bricklink<\/a>.                <\/li>\n<li>Damn. I never tried Zima. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2204596\/\">Now                  I guess I won&apos;t get the chance<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&apos;s Wall Street Journal and New York Times (and many other outlets) reported that the Houghton-Mifflin trade division will be &#8220;temporarily&#8221; suspending acquisitions of new books. (The textbook division, which provides most of the company&apos;s revenues, is not involved.) This comes in the wake of H-M&apos;s purchase by an Irish software company last year. I [&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":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","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=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}