{"id":1577,"date":"2010-11-20T09:51:55","date_gmt":"2010-11-20T16:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1577"},"modified":"2010-11-20T09:56:07","modified_gmt":"2010-11-20T16:56:07","slug":"odd-lots-132","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1577","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5689303\/how-to-measure-the-distance-from-the-earth-to-the-moon\">Here&#8217;s how the ancient Greeks calculated the distance between the Earth and the Moon<\/a>. If the notion surprises you, well, you were reading comic books during geometry class, weren&#8217;t you?<\/li>\n<li>Although I&#8217;d heard of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Millionaire_Calculator\">the Millionaire Calculator<\/a>, a sort of mechanical uber-sliderule used circa 1890-1940, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/cratermoon\/3577208760\/in\/pool-41894168726@N01\/\">I did not know that it had helped to discover Pluto<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>From The Words I Didn&#8217;t Know Until Yesterday Department: <em>materteral<\/em>, of or pertaining to an attentive aunt&#8211;basically the female analog of <em>avuncular<\/em>. Less commonly, <em>materterine<\/em>. Thanks to Jonathan O&#8217;Neal for calling them to my attention.<\/li>\n<li>I was going to cite <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/june2006.htm#06-26-2006\">Sion<\/a><\/em> , Philip Boast&#8217;s outrageous but hugely fun riff on the whole Da Vinci Code thing, as an example of a print book you can&#8217;t buy in the US (see yesterday&#8217;s entry) but I was wrong: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/servlet\/SearchResults?an=boast&amp;sts=t&amp;tn=sion&amp;x=0&amp;y=0\">You can get used copies here for a dollar<\/a>. No extra charge for either the zombies nor the angels with pubic hair.<\/li>\n<li>Dell has not handled <a href=\"http:\/\/en.community.dell.com\/support-forums\/desktop\/f\/3514\/t\/17329889.aspx\">its notorious SX270 capacitor problem<\/a> especially well. &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/11\/19\/technology\/19docs.html?_r=1\">Hide the corrosion<\/a>&#8221; might have been the company line, and the results could be Capacitorgate. That said, Dell is not the only vendor to have had this problem. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.badcaps.net\/forum\/index.php\">There&#8217;s a whole forum devoted to bad PC capacitors<\/a>.) I&#8217;ve been lucky so far&#8230;but I&#8217;ve also switched to SX280 machines, which are not as prone to the problem.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/cache.gawkerassets.com\/assets\/images\/4\/2010\/11\/500x_recordplayers1_640x.jpg\">They Don&#8217;t Make &#8216;Em Like This Anymore<\/a>&#8230;and when they did, I missed them. Dayum. (<a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5693911\/12-mildly-ridiculous-portable-record-players\">More if not quite as cool at Gizmodo<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<li>Alfred Powell Morgan basically got me started on electronics when I was 11, through his decades-spanning series of books on electronics for boys. Here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arrl.org\/news\/alfred-powell-morgan-the-eternal-boy-turns-120\">nice bio sketch of the Dan Beard of electronics<\/a> from the ARRL Web site.<\/li>\n<li>The late Thomas Gold (author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Deep-Hot-Biosphere-Fossil-Fuels\/dp\/0387985468\">The Deep Hot Biosphere<\/a>) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg20827874.800-life-is-found-in-deepest-layer-of-earths-crust.html\">may have been right<\/a>. I certainly hope so.<\/li>\n<li>Honda, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2010\/11\/19\/honda-shows-off-fit-ev-concept-at-la-auto-show-we-hope-to-see-i\/\">I know you&#8217;ll never actually build that car<\/a>, so that being the case, could I have an SUV painted the same color?<\/li>\n<li>If ski season seems to have come early this year, you aren&#8217;t being singled out. <a href=\"http:\/\/wattsupwiththat.com\/2010\/11\/18\/snowstorm-on-a-comet\/\">It&#8217;s snowing on Comet Hartley 2<\/a>. (Hey, spin that dogbone and make a habitat out of it!)<\/li>\n<li>70 is the new 40, and <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5692719\/a-history-of-zombies-in-america\">zombies are the new vampires<\/a>. Let&#8217;s talk about this again when I&#8217;m the new 40.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve never been a beer guy, but if I did drink beer, it would probably be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/imgres?imgurl=http:\/\/cdn3.ioffer.com\/img\/item\/152\/698\/541\/x1xETI3jVD2dcdm.jpg&#038;imgrefurl=http:\/\/www.ioffer.com\/si\/beer%2Btray&#038;usg=__I_0vXaVF6a3GNoUlhoUqPjNieDQ=&#038;h=225&#038;w=300&#038;sz=11&#038;hl=en&#038;start=0&#038;zoom=1&#038;tbnid=nAggj4EyhUa58M:&#038;tbnh=156&#038;tbnw=208&#038;prev=\/images%3Fq%3Dteck%2Bbeer%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1600%26bih%3D983%26tbs%3Disch:1&#038;um=1&#038;itbs=1&#038;iact=hc&#038;vpx=152&#038;vpy=95&#038;dur=1646&#038;hovh=180&#038;hovw=240&#038;tx=116&#038;ty=95&#038;ei=bP3nTLuhEYG0sAPxxriwCw&#038;oei=bP3nTLuhEYG0sAPxxriwCw&#038;esq=1&#038;page=1&#038;ndsp=36&#038;ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0\">this one<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>And pertinent to the above, <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5694301\/an-elegant-solution-to-an-unserious-drinking-problem\">here&#8217;s an elegant solution<\/a> to a problem that I myself will never have.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.instructables.com\/id\/recirculating-gravy-fountain\/\">This, on the other hand, is something I could definitely get into<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s how the ancient Greeks calculated the distance between the Earth and the Moon. If the notion surprises you, well, you were reading comic books during geometry class, weren&#8217;t you? Although I&#8217;d heard of the Millionaire Calculator, a sort of mechanical uber-sliderule used circa 1890-1940, I did not know that it had helped to discover [&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":[41,33,21,15,44,43,18,106],"class_list":["post-1577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-books","tag-electronics","tag-hardware","tag-history","tag-humor","tag-sf","tag-vehicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577","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=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1578,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions\/1578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}