{"id":385,"date":"2008-05-13T16:35:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-13T20:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=385"},"modified":"2009-01-14T21:44:36","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T01:44:36","slug":"odd-lots-33","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=385","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Sorry for the recent quietude here; the weekend was a whirlwind,                 and it took all of yesterday just to catch my breath.<\/li>\n<li>Scott Kurtz&apos; PvP webcomic celebrated its first ten years by                 showing us that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pvponline.com\/2008\/05\/04\/the-vows\/\">Brent                 Sienna actually has eyes<\/a>. Wow.<\/li>\n<li>Allan Heim sent me a pointer to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/Infotech\/20569\/\">a                 nice article on the Fermi Paradox<\/a> that expresses a position                 I have been drifting toward for most of my life: That we are probably                 alone in the universe, perhaps not only as intelligent, tool-building                 beings but also as living things, period. The author makes a case                 that being alone in the universe would be very good news, but                 not for the reason you might think. Read it.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.santacruzsentinel.com\/ci_9241955?\">Borland                 is apparently selling their CodeGear division<\/a> (which develops                 and supports Delphi) to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.embarcadero.com\/\">Embarcadero                 Technologies<\/a>, a database tools company. This was not unexpected,                 and to be honest with you, I can&apos;t tell if it&apos;s a good idea or                 not. One of Delphi&apos;s most serious problems is that it got so good                 after five or six years that most people stopped upgrading; I&apos;m                 amazed at how many people are still using Delphi 6. The cost of                 the product was also an issue\u2014there is no ~$100 starter edition\u2014and                 the Turbo Delphi Explorer experiment demonstrated how important                 the ability to install components was. An amazing number of people                 wrote to me to say that they downloaded the free product, installed                 it, fooled with it for a week or so, and then went back to Delphi                 6.<\/li>\n<li>From Mike Sergent comes a pointer to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/05\/07\/dining\/07pour.html?_r=1&amp;oref=slogin\">a                 NYT piece indicating that most people do not have the training                 to discern the level of subtlety in wine flavor<\/a> that they                 claim to, and that a lot of it may exist mostly in our heads anyway.                 This is not news (to me, at least) but it&apos;s nice to see it going                 mainstream.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Covington posted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.covingtoninnovations.com\/michael\/blog\/0805\/#080506Z\">a                 fascinating graph of changes in home prices<\/a> from Q4 2006 to                 Q4 2007, suggesting that the &#8220;housing bubble&#8221; has <i>not<\/i>                 been evenly distributed. The coasts have suffered, as have most                 major cities and trendy places like Colorado&apos;s Front Range, but                 flyover places like Nebraska and Wyoming have posted solid increases                 in that time. In addition to that, sharp differences by state                 suggest that state-level housing and banking policies have more                 to do with housing cost changes than most people are willing to                 admit.<\/li>\n<li>Also from Michael is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.covingtoninnovations.com\/michael\/blog\/0805\/#080505\">a                 graph demonstrating that the US economy is not as much of a disaster                 as Big Media has been hammering on<\/a>. (I won&apos;t invite all the                 usual hate mail by explaining in detail why this is, as it&apos;s pretty                 obvious if you think about it.)<\/li>\n<li>The other day I found myself thinking something remarkable (for                 me): I would rather buy a Mac and run my essential Windows apps                 in a Parallels window (or in a compatibility box like Crossover)                 than move to Vista. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry for the recent quietude here; the weekend was a whirlwind, and it took all of yesterday just to catch my breath. Scott Kurtz&apos; PvP webcomic celebrated its first ten years by showing us that Brent Sienna actually has eyes. Wow. Allan Heim sent me a pointer to a nice article on the Fermi Paradox [&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-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","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=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}