{"id":3519,"date":"2015-10-01T15:32:56","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T21:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3519"},"modified":"2015-10-01T15:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T21:32:59","slug":"odd-lots-285","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3519","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I posted <a href= \"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cunning-Blood-Jeff-Duntemann-ebook\/dp\/B0131OHVIA\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Cunning Blood<\/em> on the Kindle Store<\/a> 61 days ago, and in those two months it&#8217;s earned just a hair over $3,600. 46% of that came from KU page turns. Fellow indie authors, I think we have us a business model.<\/li>\n<li>Tom Roderick sent me a link to <a href= \"http:\/\/www.donnelly-house.net\/programming\/cdp1802\/simelf\/\" target= \"_blank\">a very nice graphical COSMAC ELF emulator<\/a>, designed to look as much like Joe Weisbecker&#8217;s unit from <em>Popular Electronics<\/em> (August, 1976) as possible. You can toggle in opcodes like we did almost forty years ago, and run them. (The Q line drives an LED.)<\/li>\n<li>In cleaning out the garage, I took a look at the motor\/battery module of my robot Cosmo Klein (which I built in 1977-1978) and realized it wouldn&#8217;t take much to get it running again. The original Cosmo had two COSMAC systems and a glass-screen TV for a head (which made him very top-heavy) along with a cranky robotic arm. (<a href= \"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/121958351@N02\/sets\/72157643274453323\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here are some photos of my COSMAC projects and Cosmo himself<\/a>.) I could hide an RPi2 in that thing and you&#8217;d never find it. Funny how stuff changes in 38 years&#8230;or maybe not funny at all.<\/li>\n<li>From <em>Astounding Stories<\/em>: <a href= \"http:\/\/pulpcovers.com\/the-sargasso-of-space\/\" target= \"_blank\">Spacemen beating the crap out of one another in zero-G with&#8230;yardsticks<\/a>. By Edmond Hamilton. Not sure of the year, but <a href= \"http:\/\/pulpcovers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Astounding%20September%201931.cbr\" target=\"_blank\">you can download the whole thing<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>From the Weirdness-I-Just-Learned-About Department: The <em><a href= \"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/wonkblog\/wp\/2015\/09\/28\/this-sleazy-and-totally-illegal-savings-scheme-may-be-the-future-of-retirement\/\" target=\"_blank\">tontine<\/a><\/em>, a financial arrangement in which a pool of people contributes equally to buy a pool of assets, and as they die, each deceased&#8217;s share is distributed to survivors. Apart from an inceptive to murder your tontine siblings, what could go wrong?<\/li>\n<li>In the fever of a house hunt, I missed this item: <a href= \"http:\/\/www.foxbusiness.com\/industries\/2015\/05\/29\/amazon-said-to-expand-private-labels-including-food\/\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon is going to create its own line of house brands for food<\/a>. I have a peculiar curiosity about house brands, which is a sort of shadow business that doesn&#8217;t get much press. Why would an industry-leader cereal manufacturer sell its cereal in bulk to other companies to sell as competing house brands? It happens, but <a href= \"http:\/\/www.chowhound.com\/food-news\/54340\/who-makes-trader-joes-food\/\" target=\"_blank\">nobody wants to talk about it<\/a>. Big store chains have house brand versions of many products, including most mainstream cereals. There&#8217;s a book in this somewhere, though I don&#8217;t intend to write it.<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re not a balls-out supporter of nuclear power generation, I don&#8217;t want to hear a word out of you about global warming. We need <a href= \"http:\/\/www.kcet.org\/news\/redefine\/rewire\/explainers\/explainer-base-load-and-peaking-power.html\" target=\"_blank\">base load<\/a>, and neither Sun nor wind can provide base load. In truth, <a href= \"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/the-world-really-could-go-nuclear\/\" target=\"_blank\">all that stands between us and a completely nuclear future is fear (i.e., political tribalism) and money<\/a>. The money issue can be fixed. Alas, the gods themselves, etc.<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"http:\/\/cnsnews.com\/news\/article\/barbara-hollingsworth\/119-months-historic-hurricane-drought-breaks-another-record\" target=\"_blank\">It&#8217;s been 119 months since a major hurricane (Class 3 or higher) has hit the American mainland<\/a>. Unless Joaquin goes ashore along the east coast somewhere in the next several days (and current winds argue against that) it&#8217;ll be 120 months&#8211;ten years&#8211;come October 24. That&#8217;s an all-time record since records have been kept. <a href= \"http:\/\/whatreallyhappened.com\/WRHARTICLES\/globalwarming2.html\" target=\"_blank\">Global warming causes everything else<\/a>; why not better weather?<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/meanwhile-in-the-future-to-stop-climate-change-we-mus-1733583113\" target=\"_blank\">And you wonder why I&#8217;m a global warming skeptic<\/a>. Hey, fellow (potential) morlocks: I hear that our Educated Elite is delicious with melted butter.<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"http:\/\/well.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/09\/23\/consumers-are-embracing-full-fat-foods\/\" target=\"_blank\">Americans are embracing full-fat foods<\/a>, thus spitting in the face of government advice. As well they should: The War on Fat is based on fraudulent science put forth by ace scientific con-man Ancel Keys, whose only real talent was getting government to take his side. Go butter, eggs, and meat. You&#8217;ll lose weight, and feel better.<\/li>\n<li>Yes, I bring that up regularly, because I&#8217;m trying my best to ruin Keys&#8217; reputation. His deadly advice has killed tens of millions, and is still killing them. &#8220;I&#8217;m supported by the government. I&#8217;m here to kill you.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Some good news: <a href= \"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2015\/10\/east-texas-judge-throws-out-168-patent-cases-in-one-fell-swoop\/\" target=\"_blank\">A judge kneecapped champion patent troll eDekka<\/a> by invalidating its only significant patent.<\/li>\n<li>And more&#8230;for some people, least: Charlie Martin pointed me to <a href= \"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2015\/09\/how-coffee-loves-us-back\/\" target=\"_blank\">an article from Harvard summarizing a study on the beneficial effects of coffee<\/a>. Coffee appears to delay, improve, or prevent just about everything but insomnia. And what&#8217;s my main problem?<\/li>\n<li>There! A month&#8217;s worth of grouchiness in one Odd Lots! (With a few other items thrown in for spice.) I don&#8217;t do that often, but it feels good when I do.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I posted The Cunning Blood on the Kindle Store 61 days ago, and in those two months it&#8217;s earned just a hair over $3,600. 46% of that came from KU page turns. Fellow indie authors, I think we have us a business model. Tom Roderick sent me a link to a very nice graphical COSMAC [&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":[75,154,37,15,39,155,32,54,18,31],"class_list":["post-3519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-energy","tag-finance","tag-food","tag-hardware","tag-health","tag-patents","tag-programming","tag-science","tag-sf","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519","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=3519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3520,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions\/3520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}