{"id":3412,"date":"2009-04-15T18:42:18","date_gmt":"2009-04-15T22:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3412"},"modified":"2009-04-15T18:42:18","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T22:42:18","slug":"wednesday-various-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3412","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/7999168.stm\">This<\/a> is easily the oddest story I&#8217;ve read all day:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Saudi police say they are investigating a hoax that has seen people rushing to buy old-fashioned sewing machines for up to $50,000.<\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">The Singer sewing machines are said to contain traces of red mercury, a substance that may not exist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">I&#8217;d never even heard of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Red_mercury\">red mercury<\/a>&#8221; before this. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.williamgibsonbooks.com\/blog\/\" title=\"William Gibson\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Speaking of William Gibson &#8212; I wasn&#8217;t, really, but that link above came from him &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/maureenmcq.blogspot.com\/2009\/04\/cyberspace-saturates-reality.html\">Maureen F. McHugh<\/a> offers some thoughts on &#8220;Cyberspace&#8221; and how Gibson got it wrong, at least by our modern, now-real-world definition:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">But more interesting to me is that Cyberspace was initially envisioned as a place you went into. It turns out it&#8217;s not that at all. Cyberspace is the organization of your experience when you are using a linked interface. So when you&#8217;re in your car, using your GPS, you&#8217;re in cyberspace, right there on the freeway. Using you smartphone to check Twitter, you&#8217;re in cyberspace. We don&#8217;t go to cyberspace, it comes to us. It overlays our world and our experience. It changes our perception of space and time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">This is equal parts neat and terrifying.<\/li>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<li>I spent way too much time today immersed in the <a href=\"http:\/\/search.twitter.com\/search?q=%23badscifi\">#badscifi thread<\/a> on Twitter. But I also loved <a href=\"http:\/\/www.postmodernbarney.com\/2009\/04\/uncomfortable-plot-summaries\/\">these alternate plot descriptions<\/a>. My favorites are easily:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">ALIENS: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.<\/p>\n<p>DOCTOR WHO: Elderly man serially abducts young women.<\/p>\n<p>TERMINATOR: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Obviously, plenty of these come with spoilers, so be forewarned. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.progressiveruin.com\/\" title=\"Progressive Ruin\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<li>Here&#8217;s something I&#8217;m wondering: If, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/woody-allen-american-apparel-feud-getting-uglier,26690\/?utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_campaign=feeds&#038;utm_source=channel_film\">as American Apparel is now claiming<\/a>, Woody Allen&#8217;s reputation was so tarnished by sex scandal as to be worthless as an endorsement, why did they ever <i>use<\/i> it as such?<\/li>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<li>There&#8217;s been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/#hl=en&#038;q=AmazonFail&#038;btnG=Google+Search&#038;aq=f&#038;oq=AmazonFail&#038;fp=RgodfiivdiU\">a lot<\/a> written about &#8220;AmazonFail&#8221; the past couple of days, but I think <a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2009\/04\/14\/amazonfail-followup\/\">John Scalzi<\/a> sums it up quite nicely: &#8220;&#8230;people rarely freak out in a moderate sort of way.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is easily the oddest story I&#8217;ve read all day: Saudi police say they are investigating a hoax that has seen people rushing to buy old-fashioned sewing machines for up to $50,000. The Singer sewing machines are said to contain traces of red mercury, a substance that may not exist. I&#8217;d never even heard of &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3412\">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":[],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-3412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-various"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412"}],"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=3412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}