{"id":758,"date":"2009-06-03T16:45:32","date_gmt":"2009-06-03T20:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=758"},"modified":"2009-06-03T17:13:24","modified_gmt":"2009-06-03T21:13:24","slug":"odd-lots-68","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=758","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>Our good president is creating czars right and left, to the point where you can&#8217;t tell the czars without a program. So maybe we need a czar czar&#8211;I know a guy named Binks who could do the job&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Jim Strickland sent me <a href=\"http:\/\/www.5min.com\/Video\/Superfluid-Liquid-Helium-Phenomenon-1885819\">a decent video demonstration of superfluidity in liquid helium<\/a>. Liquid helium had a starring role in my 1980 story &#8220;Cold Hands,&#8221; and Richard Bartrop&#8217;s cover image of my upcoming story collection <em>Cold Hands and Other Stories<\/em> includes Richard&#8217;s visualization of liquid helium floating free in atmosphere at zero-G. I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;ve ever fussed with liquid helium in orbit, but if we have, I&#8217;d like pointers to any mentions.<\/li>\n<li>In my novel <em>The Cunning Bl<\/em>ood, I postulated fluidic computers, which use fluid pressure and flow rates as the encoding units of information. People think I made this up completely, but not so: <a href=\"http:\/\/judson.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/02\/guest-column-like-water-for-money\/\">The technology was in use as early as 1948<\/a>, and was written up in <em>Popular Mechanics<\/em> in the 1970s. (That&#8217;s where I first heard of it, though I can&#8217;t find the citation right now.)<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re at all interested in the future of the publishing industry and newspapers in particular, be sure to read <a href=\"http:\/\/jamesfallows.theatlantic.com\/archives\/2009\/05\/who_exactly_is_killing_the_pre.php\">James Fallows&#8217; take on it<\/a>. Ad-supported print media are being bled white by eBay and especially Craigslist, which is the direct digital analog of print classified ads.<\/li>\n<li>From the Words-That-Sound-Exactly-Like-What-They-Are Department: &#8220;Dudelsack&#8221; is German for &#8220;bagpipe.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Ethanol is a terribly inefficient use of corn (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.omafra.gov.on.ca\/english\/engineer\/facts\/93-023.htm\">corn stoves that burn it for home heat<\/a> are a far better use of corn as fuel) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/lifestyle\/content\/may2009\/bw20090514_058678.htm?chan=rss_topEmailedStories_ssi_5\">it may destroy engines as well<\/a>. Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.<\/li>\n<li>Some years ago, while bumming around my old neighborhood in Chicago, I noticed an observatory dome on an addition to a late 40s house about three blocks from where I grew up. It was right across the street from Olympia Park, where I tried and failed several times to become good at softball. Pete Albrecht noticed that the <em>New York Times<\/em> did <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/10\/04\/garden\/04observatories.html?_r=2&amp;pagewanted=all\">an article on home observatories a couple of years ago<\/a>, which included some photos of the observatory, built by an accountant named John Spack.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our good president is creating czars right and left, to the point where you can&#8217;t tell the czars without a program. So maybe we need a czar czar&#8211;I know a guy named Binks who could do the job&#8230; Jim Strickland sent me a decent video demonstration of superfluidity in liquid helium. Liquid helium had a [&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":[43,54,18,68],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-humor","tag-science","tag-sf","tag-telescopes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758","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=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":759,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions\/759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}