{"id":1077,"date":"2008-01-02T15:26:19","date_gmt":"2008-01-02T19:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/02\/even-more-things-i-did-not-know\/"},"modified":"2008-01-03T00:40:36","modified_gmt":"2008-01-03T04:40:36","slug":"even-more-things-i-did-not-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/02\/even-more-things-i-did-not-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Even More Things I Did Not Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Science has brought us a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedom2ink.com\/\">permanent, but easily-removable, tattooing ink<\/a>. Does this change the metatext of tattooing? I mean, the pain is still there, but if the permanence isn&#8217;t part of the subtext anymore, what does that mean for the story? Is it to obvious to predict the rise of a serial-tattooing culture, or a rift between the permanents and the &#8220;freedoms&#8221;?<\/li>\n<li>100-foot beer fermentation tanks sometimes <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/scotland\/highlands_and_islands\/7165151.stm\">just wash up on shore<\/a>. With the mystery numbers on the side, this could easily have been a really advanced form of viral advertising for LOST, or something similar.<\/li>\n<li>It is, <a href=\"http:\/\/piers.mit.edu\/piersonline\/piers.php?volume=3&#038;number=7&#038;page=1148\">apparently<\/a>, harder to sleep in places with good GSM coverage. I wonder if this means that humans actually have a sixth sense for parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can&#8217;t perceive visually?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/article.php?id=D8TR6ASG0&#038;show_article=1\">2007 was the weirdest weather year on record<\/a>. I&#8217;m not surprised&#8211;put more energy in, get more weirdness out&#8211;but I didn&#8217;t know it was a matter of record.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m kind of embarrassed that I didn&#8217;t know <a href=\"http:\/\/tech.ablegray.com\/article\/why-we-use-i-j-and-k-in-for-loops\">the reason why i and j are the most commonly used loop counter variable names<\/a>&#8211;it threatens my geek cred. In my defense, I never wrote any Fortran programs. I bet my rocket scientist pal would have known this.<\/li>\n<li>I did know that &#8220;Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill&#8221;, &#8220;Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others&#8221;, and &#8220;Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy&#8221;. In fact, these facts are kind of the plague of my professional existence (and, the root cause of my most secret career fears). I did not know that there was scientific proof of this set of facts, or that together they constituted <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dunning-Kruger_effect\">a thing with a name<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>That whole &#8220;turn the other cheek&#8221; thing apparently has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/world\/middle_east\/article3104350.ece\">a whole different interpretation<\/a> in the Armenian and Greek Orthodox churches. Incidentally, I love the idea of priests drawing a line down the middle of the floor and then getting into fights over it, like a pair of siblings forced to share a bedroom, or a back seat.<\/li>\n<li>The web has reached the level of ubiquity where even things like the <a href=\"http:\/\/thewonderboy.org\/\">annual Wonderboy competition has an interactive online CMS<\/a>. Of course, given <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Adagio_for_Strings\">the HGPA site<\/a>, I probably shouldn&#8217;t talk.<\/li>\n<li>J. Edgar Hoover, making use of the full resources of the FBI, spent <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/science\/nature\/2033324.stm\">22 years trying to get Einstein arrested<\/a> as a subversive or spy. I knew about all kinds of other shenanigans that Hoover got up to&#8211;indeed the history of the FBI is a large part of the reason why I am so firmly in favour of open, judicial oversight of police powers&#8211;but not this one.<\/li>\n<li>It is possible to make a burger <a href=\"http:\/\/www.speakeasy.org\/%7Esjmaks\/bcb\/bcb2.html\">entirely of bacon<\/a>. Apparently it&#8217;s a bit salty.<\/li>\n<li>In a loose hold&#8217;em game, the value of suited hands goes up because they are precisely the types of hands which will benefit from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Morton's_theorem\">implicit collusion<\/a>. Not that I know where to find a loose hold&#8217;em game.<\/li>\n<li>You can&#8217;t just buy Sudafed in the States. Really. And it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mises.org\/story\/2827\">might be a conspiracy<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/226\/story\/23730.html\">Doorknobs are an endangered species.<\/a> Why do I still have doorknobs? Sometimes it seems like life is just a series of &#8220;not only was I taking that for granted, but I didn&#8217;t even realize there was something to take for granted&#8221; moments.<\/li>\n<li>For a &#8220;pocket&#8221; digital camera, a 6 megapixel camera might just <a href=\"http:\/\/6mpixel.org\/en\/?\">take much better pictures<\/a> than a 12 megapixel one. Since I&#8217;m still using a 3 megapixel one, this is a theoretical point for me now. However, my gadget geek side is thinking my upcoming trip to Australia is a good excuse for a new camera, so it might suddenly become relevant.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Belphegor\">Belphegor<\/a> is a demon who helps people to make discoveries. Can I get a medallion of him to go along with my <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Saint_Christopher\">namesake<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li>In Catalonia the traditional nativity scene often includes <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Caganer\">a hidden character<\/a> who is&#8230; um&#8230; defecating. That is one weird Christmas &#8220;where&#8217;s Waldo&#8221; game right there.<\/li>\n<li>Apparently there was once <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bitchslapp.com\/files\/lysolpic_281.jpg\">a use for Lysol<\/a> which I was completely ignorant of&#8230; and I wish I could go back to being ignorant. Seriously, I&#8217;d like to sanitize my brain. Not with Lysol.<\/li>\n<li>Squirrels have no soul.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Joss_Whedon\">Joss Whedon<\/a> did an online comic with <a href=\"http:\/\/fabioandgabriel.blogspot.com\/\">Fabio Moon<\/a>. It&#8217;s pretty funny. <a href=\"http:\/\/creative.myspace.com\/groups\/_mh\/mdhp\/pages\/issue01\/sshock.html\">Part one<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/creative.myspace.com\/groups\/_mh\/mdhp\/pages\/issue02\/sugarshock.html\">part two<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/creative.myspace.com\/design\/_js\/darkhorse\/issue3_story1.html\">part three<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>You can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.modern-strings.de\/sound\/barber.htm\">download a lovely performance<\/a> of Barber&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Adagio_for_Strings\">Adagio for Strings<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Science has brought us a permanent, but easily-removable, tattooing ink. Does this change the metatext of tattooing? I mean, the pain is still there, but if the permanence isn&#8217;t part of the subtext anymore, what does that mean for the story? Is it to obvious to predict the rise of a serial-tattooing culture, or a rift between the permanents and&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/02\/even-more-things-i-did-not-know\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,12,9,2,3],"tags":[181,180,178,103,179,107,177,182,38,183],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-linkapalooza","category-music","category-political","category-technology","tag-demonology","tag-design","tag-incompetence","tag-poker","tag-police-powers","tag-religion","tag-tattoo","tag-vintage-advertising","tag-weather","tag-whedon","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-hn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}