{"id":3226,"date":"2008-11-13T21:44:17","date_gmt":"2008-11-14T02:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3226"},"modified":"2008-11-13T21:46:51","modified_gmt":"2008-11-14T02:46:51","slug":"thursday-various","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3226","title":{"rendered":"Thursday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<ul>  <font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/securityfix\/\">This is nice<\/a>, but I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve seen an overwhelming drop in spam this week, have you? Besides which, as the article says, it will only take spammers about a week to recover. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.waxy.org\/links\" title=\"Waxy.org Links\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<li>So apparently there&#8217;s a town in Turkey called Batman. And apparently its mayor is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ananova.com\/news\/story\/sm_3082900.html\">suing Christopher Nolan and Warner Brothers<\/a> because &#8220;There is only one Batman in the world&#8230;.The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.&#8221; Which of course sounds ridiculous and ill-timed. They&#8217;ve had some sixty years and plenty of other Batman books and movies to raise an objection and haven&#8217;t. And even if theirs <em>was<\/em> the first Batman in the world &#8212; which some of the comments <a href=\"http:\/\/peterdavid.malibulist.com\/archives\/006574.html\">at Peter David&#8217;s blog<\/a> suggest it&#8217;s not &#8212; that&#8217;s no reason there can&#8217;t be more than one. Especially since a) more people know the caped crusader than the town; and b) Bruce Wayne is Batman because he&#8217;s dressed like a <em>bat<\/em>, not because he&#8217;s Turkish. Unless of course he&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4vSpOZeccnE\">Turkish Batman<\/a>&#8230;but maybe it&#8217;s better not to confuse the issue with that.<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<li>Hmm. I <em>was<\/em> planning on <a href=\"http:\/\/yearofreaders.blogspot.com\/\">reading next year<\/a> anyway&#8230; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookslut.com\/blog\/\" title=\"Bookslut\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn14600-pollutants-cause-birds-to-sing-tainted-love-songs.html\">Pollutants cause birds to sing tainted love songs<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>Yet not all chemicals make for shoddy songs. Earlier this year, a team of UK researchers discovered that oestrogen-mimicking compounds, such as bisphenol A, endow starlings with more complex songs that females prefer over chemical-free songs.&#8221;It was kind of scary because their immune system was shot to hell,&#8221; DeLeon says of the starlings. &#8220;The females were preferring males that were singing better, but [the song] wasn&#8217;t an honest signal of quality.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Style over substance, even in the ornthological world. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.warrenellis.com\/\" title=\"Warren Ellis\">via<\/a>] <\/font><\/li>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<li>My mild obsession with <em>Top Chef<\/em> continues apace. They&#8217;re in New York this season, and it will be interesting to see what I recognize. (I&#8217;m guessing they filmed over the summer, but I never saw them, even near Grand Central, which is only a couple blocks from my office.) I was just thinking my love of the show is a little silly, since it&#8217;s essentially the same thing season to season, if not episode to episode. But they definitely seem to be shaking things up a little. A double elimination in the first week? Yikes. Immediate favorite to win? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bravotv.com\/Top_Chef\/season\/5\/bios\/bios.php?c=stefan\">Stefan<\/a>, maybe. Last year, I guessed Richard right off the bat, and he made it to the final three.<font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">And no, don&#8217;t worry. I won&#8217;t be live-blogging the entire season or anything. <\/font><\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/font><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is nice, but I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve seen an overwhelming drop in spam this week, have you? Besides which, as the article says, it will only take spammers about a week to recover. [via] So apparently there&#8217;s a town in Turkey called Batman. And apparently its mayor is suing Christopher Nolan and Warner Brothers &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3226\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-3226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}