{"id":451,"date":"2008-03-07T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-07T20:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=451"},"modified":"2009-01-14T22:44:58","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T02:44:58","slug":"odd-lots-41","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=451","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Do not fail to read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/politics\/security\/commentary\/securitymatters\/2008\/03\/securitymatters_0306\">Bruce                 Schneier&apos;s latest short item in <i>Wired<\/i><\/a>, which is his                 simple demolition of David Brin&apos;s peculiar &#8220;transparent society&#8221;                 concept, which I first read of in his so-so novel <i>Earth<\/i>                 (1990) and thought was BS even then. Having no secrets doesn&apos;t                 help where the differential of power between two parties is high.                 This seems pretty obvious to me; I do not understand why Brin                 gets points for this &#8220;no secrets&#8221; notion of his.<\/li>\n<li>Some of the worst horror films (as well as SF films and some                 westerns) can be streamed without charge <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmovies.com\/index.php\">here<\/a>.                 Where else can you find &#8220;Attack of the Giant Leeches&#8221;                 or &#8220;Killer Shrews,&#8221; both of which I recall seeing on                 Channel 7 at 4 PM on Thursdays back 1965-ish. Even at age 12 I                 could roll my eyes and say, &#8220;Those aren&apos;t giant shrews. Those                 are dogs in bad shrew costumes.&#8221; But hey, that&apos;s what makes                 a B-movie a B-movie, right?<\/li>\n<li>It may be clever, but can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news.com\/2300-7348_3-6233303.html?tag=ne.gall.latest\">a                 gun this small<\/a> really be deadly? (That is, assuming you don&apos;t                 aim it up your left nostril&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li>This is freaking amazing: <a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/news\/2008\/03\/080303-mars-avalanche.html\">Images                 of a landslide on Mars<\/a>, taken while it&apos;s happening. (Thanks                 to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Jim Strickland pointed out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antennalaunchers.com\/antlaunching.html\">a                 pneumatic tennis-ball based antenna launcher<\/a>. We always used                 slingshots back in the day, and I have a Greenlee Cablecaster                 that was designed for dragging CAT5 over suspended ceilings via                 fishline, but something about the ball shooter is <i>very<\/i>                 appealing.<\/li>\n<li>Glover Wright is bringing back <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfquarterly.net\/\">Science                 Fiction Quarterly<\/a> as an online pub, and it looks promising.                 I recall reading a few ancient issues of the original <i>SF Quarterly<\/i>                 pulps from the late 50s and was pleased, though the world and                 I were, um, at least thirty years younger then. The first issue                 will be out in March.<\/li>\n<li>Gripe of the week: The keycap letters on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/january2007.htm#01-23-2007\">my                 expensive Avant Stellar keyboard<\/a> are <i>decals<\/i>, and <i>they                 are already wearing off<\/i>. It&apos;s only been a year. What&apos;s this                 thing going to look like after another ten?<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of keyboards: I need a wireless keyboard for use while                 sitting on the couch and running photos or video clips on our                 big TV. The SX270 is under the TV in plain view of the couch.                 The keyboard needs to have an integral pointing device. (I prefer                 things like IBM&apos;s TrackPoint nipple to the ubiquitous scratchpad.)                 Anybody got any suggestions?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do not fail to read Bruce Schneier&apos;s latest short item in Wired, which is his simple demolition of David Brin&apos;s peculiar &#8220;transparent society&#8221; concept, which I first read of in his so-so novel Earth (1990) and thought was BS even then. Having no secrets doesn&apos;t help where the differential of power between two parties is [&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":[15,34,18],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-hardware","tag-movies","tag-sf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","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=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":467,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}