{"id":423,"date":"2008-04-10T15:56:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-10T19:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=423"},"modified":"2009-01-14T22:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T02:13:00","slug":"odd-lots-37","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=423","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Those who marveled at the quirky motion of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=b2bExqhhWRI\">the                 Big Dog quadripedal robot<\/a> should not miss <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/372272\/video-of-bigdog-beta-quadruped-robot-is-so-stupid-its-hilarious\">the                 (inevitable) video parody<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>And while we&apos;re watching videos, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=I2Ux_96iTq8\">make                 sure you watch this one<\/a>, starring a Pope Benedict XVI bobblehead                 identical to the one on my bookshelf. While this is what I call                 &#8220;gentle humor&#8221; and I suspect that Good Pope Bennie (with                 whom I disagree but whom I do not despise) would have laughed                 had he seen it, the usual grump-ass moroons who object to things                 like this prevailed to have the ad pulled. Fu on &apos;em.<\/li>\n<li>Which of course reminded me of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lessonsforhope.org\/images\/cartoon_larson.gif\">this                 famous Far Side cartoon<\/a>, which incensed Jane Goodall&apos;s staffers                 but made the great lady herself laugh. My father told me early                 on: Life demands a sense of humor. Only cowards cannot laugh at                 themselves, and only hopeless slave-collar tribalists cannot abide                 humor about their own leaders.<\/li>\n<li>George Hodous sent me a link to an artist who uses intersecting                 lasers to etch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bathsheba.com\/crystal\/starmap\/\">a                 crystal cube containing a 3-D starmap of our stellar neighborhood<\/a>                 out to five parsecs. Nice work, and if you ever forget, he&apos;s marked                 the direction to the galactic core.<\/li>\n<li>Maybe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2008\/04\/080406153404.htm\">this                 is why I started to get muscular in middle age<\/a>. Thanks to                 Frank Glover for the pointer.<\/li>\n<li>Takahiro Kato of Japan sent me <a href=\"http:\/\/ja9ttt.homedns.org\/hamf\/myexp\/12V_Tube_QRPp_Transmitter.html\">a                 link to his page on 12V tube work<\/a>, including a 30mw transmitter                 he designed. It&apos;s in Japanese, and (alas) the machine translation                 link does about as well as machine translation links generally                 do. But look at his construction techniques\u2014I haven&apos;t seen                 anything that clean and rational for a long time.<\/li>\n<li>Those who love <i>The Rocketeer<\/i> (whether the graphic novel                 or the film) will want to take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.impactlab.com\/2007\/04\/28\/yves-rossy-photo-gallery-of-the-flying-man\/\">this<\/a>,                 documenting a Swedish inventor who has come damned close to making                 it real. (Yes, he does look more like Buzz Lightyear than Cliff                 Secord.) No explanation here of why his pants don&apos;t catch fire,                 but hey, wow.<\/li>\n<li>While hunting for a new standard model thumbdrive to replace                 the no-longer-made Cruzer Mini I ran across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.core77.com\/blog\/object_culture\/flx_the_squeezable_usbdrive_9409.asp\">this                 prototype<\/a>. Not what I need but very cool nonetheless. Let&apos;s                 just hope they don&apos;t pollute it with U3. <\/li>\n<li>In thinking about non-obvious disruptive technologies, it occurred                 to me that using nanotech filters to separate gold from seawater                 could be hugely disruptive to nationalk economies if it became                 effective. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goldfever.com\/gold_sea.htm\">However,                 with gold at about thirteen ppt (parts per trillion) in seawater<\/a>,                 it would take a <i>lot<\/i> of nanofilm to get any useful quantity.                 I vaguely recall an old SF story about a guy who pulled gold out                 of seawater somehow. Anybody remember what that was?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those who marveled at the quirky motion of the Big Dog quadripedal robot should not miss the (inevitable) video parody. And while we&apos;re watching videos, make sure you watch this one, starring a Pope Benedict XVI bobblehead identical to the one on my bookshelf. While this is what I call &#8220;gentle humor&#8221; and I suspect [&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-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","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=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}