{"id":327,"date":"2008-07-16T08:36:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-16T12:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=327"},"modified":"2009-01-14T17:55:58","modified_gmt":"2009-01-14T21:55:58","slug":"odd-lots-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=327","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>A reader wrote to tell me that I am &#8220;MSG blind,&#8221; (see                 my entry for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/Diary.htm#07-14-2008\">July 14, 2008<\/a>) which means                 that MSG does not affect my taste chemistry\u2014and that people                 who are MSG blind are generally the people who react badly to                 the chemical. Alas, I can&apos;t find anything about this online, but                 it&apos;s an interesting idea.<\/li>\n<li>Screw the polar bears. The big downside to Global Warming\u2122                 is now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2008\/05\/080515072740.htm\">kidney                 stones<\/a>. Ouch.<\/li>\n<li>I hadn&apos;t heard much about the Casimir Effect recently, but courtesy                 Frank Glover, here&apos;s a good article on <a href=\"http:\/\/nextbigfuture.com\/2008\/07\/casimir-force-was-reduced-by-30-to-40.html\">modifying                 nanoscale structures to minimize &#8220;stiction&#8221; due to Casimir                 forces<\/a>. More speculative but lots more fun are some links                 at the end describing projects attempting to harness Casimir forces                 in various ways, many or most of which still seem a little whiffy.                 (I made enthusiastic use of vacuum energy in my novel, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/CunningBlood.htm\">The                 Cunning Blood<\/a><\/i>.)<\/li>\n<li>The <i>Washington Post<\/i> suggests that we <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/07\/11\/AR2008071102394.html\">strap                 engines on the ISS and send it to the Moon<\/a>, to act as an orbital                 station to help stage travel to a lunar base. Maybe a little far                 fetched, but only a little\u2014and we&apos;re not doing much with                 the damned thing where it&apos;s sitting right now.<\/li>\n<li>And as if NASA didn&apos;t have enough to worry about, now, well,                 scientists are telling them that they had better establish <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5025363\/we-must-have-space-sex-for-moon-and-mars-astronauts-says-scientist\">an                 officially sanctioned 200-mile-high club<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The acronym is unfortunate, but <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5025423\/sandisk-worm-write+once-sd-cards-cant-be-altered-last-100-years\">Sandisk&apos;s                 write-once read-many (WORM) SD card<\/a> has an application that                 isn&apos;t even mentioned in the press release: A unit for mounting                 a hack-proof operating system instance. No mention what the access                 time is (I&apos;m guessing slowwwww) but it&apos;s an approach that many                 people have been calling for for some years.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, as a proud godfather of two nieces who are big for                 their ages but still very small, <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5025144\/video-girl-cheats-claw-game-in-creative-way\">this                 video made me cringe a little<\/a>. (Don&apos;t parents have enough                 to worry about?) Quick, how long would it take you mechanical                 engineer types to devise a sheet-metal flap valve to fix this                 problem?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A reader wrote to tell me that I am &#8220;MSG blind,&#8221; (see my entry for July 14, 2008) which means that MSG does not affect my taste chemistry\u2014and that people who are MSG blind are generally the people who react badly to the chemical. Alas, I can&apos;t find anything about this online, but it&apos;s an [&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-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","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=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}