{"id":58,"date":"2008-01-20T21:06:53","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T04:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=58"},"modified":"2008-01-20T21:06:53","modified_gmt":"2008-01-21T04:06:53","slug":"geek-jam-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=58","title":{"rendered":"Geek jam session"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, I spent a fun evening playing board games (new: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boardgamegeek.com\/game\/26990\">Container<\/a>!) and engaging in geek talk.  Oh, how I love a good intellectual discussion!  (You know, like the <a href=\"http:\/\/salondesgeeks.com\/\">Salon des Geeks<\/a>.)  I guess it&#8217;s the geek version of a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jam_session\">jam session<\/a>; everyone hangs around and throws in their particular views or brings up new themes as the thought strikes them.  Here&#8217;s what the idea buffet served up last night:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li>According to the latest evidence, <i>Homo sapiens<\/i> apparently did not evolve from <i>Homo erectus<\/i>.  Both of us, plus <i>Homo habilis<\/i>, came from a common ancestor &#8212; erectus and habilis were different (less successful) offshoots.<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s an anti-aging chemical that reverses effects such as a loss of elasticity in connective tissue which has been doing human studies since 2001 (and shown that it helps with, for example, hardening of arteries).  However, the chemical&#8217;s patent expired, so it is now in the public domain, and no pharmaceutical company therefore is interested in finishing the (expensive) trials needed to get it FDA-certified.<\/li>\n<li>I claimed that irradiated food seems to be unavailable because people are scared of the word &#8220;irradiated&#8221; and therefore wouldn&#8217;t buy it.  Others noted that irradiated food can actually have a bad taste, since the irradiation process can damage the &#8220;good&#8221; proteins in, say, milk, not just the &#8220;bad&#8221; (bacterial) ones.  So there might be a valid taste-reason that irradiated milk is inferior to un-irradiated (bacteria-laden) milk.  Also, apparently many people agree with this statement: &#8220;If you had some radioactive milk, boiling it would make it safe to drink.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>As annoying as shopping is, it can be viewed in a more positive light if you think of it as an act of exercising your financial power.  I like that.<\/li>\n<li>And to follow up on my comment about carbonated fruit, there is actually a company, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fizzyfruit.com\/\">Fizzy Fruit<\/a>, that is marketing it.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There was much more, and it got very late, and it was a great evening overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, I spent a fun evening playing board games (new: Container!) and engaging in geek talk. Oh, how I love a good intellectual discussion! (You know, like the Salon des Geeks.) I guess it&#8217;s the geek version of a jam session; everyone hangs around and throws in their particular views or brings up new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,5,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}