Odd Lots
- This is where we stayed on Grand Cayman last week. Unless I misrecall, it was about $150 a night. Don’t forget that it was not air conditioned.
- For deep reading, print may be the way to go, for reasons we don’t yet understand. In looking back a year or so, I realize that I generally read fiction on my Transformer Prime, and nonfiction on paper. It wasn’t a conscious decision–and may simply be due to a reluctance of nonfiction publishers to issue ebooks–but it was probably the correct one.
- Here’s yet another reason why I’ve decided to let the Sun actually reach my skin.
- It’s starting to look like diet has little or no effect on cancer risk. This has been my suspicion for a long time. Obesity, yes. Diet itself, no. (Thanks to Bruce Baker for the link.)
- Ohh, Ancel Key’s beautiful wickedness is all starting to unravel. Saturated fat has nothing to do with heart disease. This has also been a suspicion of mine for some time, along with the suspicion that eating fat will make you lose weight more quickly than simply going low-carb. It certainly worked that way for me. I now weigh only eight pounds more than I did when I was 24, and a good deal of that is probably muscle I put on via ten years of weight training. (Thanks to Trevor Tompkins for the link.)
- Interesting paper on why the Neanderthals died out. They didn’t necessarily die out becausethey were inferior. (Maybe they didn’t die out at all but are still here, pretending to be ugly Saps.) If I had to guess, I’d say their skulls got so big as to make childbirth problematic. But what were they doing with all that gray matter? (Thanks to Erik Hanson for the link.)
- I stumbled on a year-old article that pretty much captures my reaction to weather.com. I will add, however, that weather.com beats the living hell out of The Weather Channel.
- I’m still waiting for reports of cataclysmic pwnage on XP machines. The number “2000” comes to mind.
- Speaking of which, I still need XP because my HP S20 slide scanner has no driver that will run on Windows 7. Haven’t tried the VM trick yet, but ultimately that’s the way I’ll have to go.
- I knew there was a reason I only lived in Baltimore for 23 months.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: books · ebooks · hardware · health · software · travel
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Hi Jeff,
When it comes to keeping old scanners usable with newer operating systems, VueScan can come in handy… (No link so it’s obvious I’m not just spamming!)
I use it with an old Minolta SCSI film scanner and it works fine.
Regards,
Stephen
I bought VueScan as soon as the problem came up, and it works great on my old HP 5370C flatbed. The S20, however, is an oddity, and VueScan can’t use it without a driver in place. For the time being I’ve got it hooked to an XP machine without a network connection, and until I find time to get the XP VM feature running on Win7 that’ll have to do.
Jeff, Not so sure the reason you feel you need the extra vitamin D applies to you from that article you linked to. I suspect that with the name Duntemann you hail from Northern European stock.
Since the early 1990’s when I had my first skin cancer removed I have tried to get some sun but not too much. I thought I had been doing well until last year when I had two Mohs surgeries on my face in November and December. I have lost count, but when you have had perhaps a dozen of those things removed the sun doesn’t always seem so friendly.
I’m in greater or lesser proportion Polish, German, Irish, and French, so that’s true. However, I have good genes: My mom (whom I take after in most physical respects beyond gender) worked out in the fields throughout her childhood and teens, used to sunbathe sans sunscreen, and never had any trouble with skin cancer. I’m not going to overdo it, but my D has always been a little low, and if this raises my level above low-normal I’m going to keep on with it.
The saturated fat article is interesting. Thanx.