Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• While chasing an interesting "out of the blue" idea that came to me while exercising the other day, I happened upon an RV surplus shop. Not surprisingly, it's in Elkhart, Indiana (Ground Zero for the American RV industry) and it sells leftovers and overstocks of RV parts and interior furniture. If I were to want to built a custom RV dinette table with a built-in keyboard, well, this might be the place to start.
• Good grief: Has Big Media run out of Republicans to torment? ABC News posted this story about the pastor of Obama's Chicago church, who repeatedly condemns the US in his sermons and tells his people that they should be singing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America." Expect those sermons (which are offered for sale by the church) to become very popular in coming months.
• Illinois is famous for a lot of things, but being the historical capital of manufacturing of fraternal organization initiation and hazing equipment is not one of them. However, the De Moulin Company of Greenville, Illinois, now known for making band uniforms, used to do a big and almost unimaginably bizarre business manufacturing expensive gag items used to make new Masons and Elks feel like one of the gang. The precise psychology here is obscure to me (the last remotely fraternal organization I joined was the Boy Scouts) but the devices are just insane. Browse and boggle.
• Here's another source for home-made telescope optics and truss telescope kits up to 32" in clear aperature. Even though I'm not a big Dobsonian fan, the scopes look good, and if you want light-gathering power above all else something like this is as good as you're going to do short of a full-concrete observatory. The optics are not cheap, but they're good. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)
• Also from Pete comes a link to a site selling Swiss Army Ohmmeters. Should the Swiss Army encounter resistance, well, they'll be ready.
• Mike Burton (who worked in the industry for some time) wrote to say that "double shot" keyboards are no longer produced due to their expense. A double-shot keyboard is one in which the keycaps are molded in two steps: One step to mold the body of the cap, with a void in the shape of the letter, and a second to fill the void with black plastic. Such keycaps never lose their legends, like my decal-equipped Avant Stellar is now doing at great speed. I guess I had better stock up on period Northgates.
• We have evidently found the gene that triggers the onset of puberty. One wonders what suppressing this gene would do long-term. What would be the psychology of a 75-year-old boy who had never gone through puberty? Larry Niven toyed with the idea in World Out of Time, speculating that stopping puberty would stop aging, but I intuit that much more could be done with it. Would I give up sex for a shot at becoming immortal? (Answer from this side of the fence: No. Ask me in 1962 and you might have gotten a different answer.) Much depends on whether emotional maturity is a process inherent in or only affected by puberty. Sooner or later some renegade will try this, and we'll know.