{"id":3433,"date":"2009-05-04T18:35:54","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T22:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3433"},"modified":"2009-05-04T18:35:54","modified_gmt":"2009-05-04T22:35:54","slug":"monday-various-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3433","title":{"rendered":"Monday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The AV Club&#8217;s Josh Modell <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/reader-mail-i-give-your-grades-an-f-av-club,27521\/?utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_campaign=feeds&#038;utm_source=channel_film\">on the difficulty with giving reviews a letter grade<\/a>. There&#8217;s a healthy discussion there, but I think Keith Phipps sums it up nicely in the comments:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">When I write I know the grade I&#8217;m assigning the movie\/tv show\/album helps me frame my thoughts. But, in the end, it&#8217;s the thoughts that matter, not the rating at the end of them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Ethics schmethics! So first <i>The Chicago Tribune<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/business\/sns-ap-us-tribune-reader-survey,0,5866568.story\">focus-grouped some news stories<\/a> before they were published. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.warrenellis.com\/\" title=\"Warren Ellis\">via<\/a>] And then it was revealed that pharmaceutical giant Merck and Elsevier <a href=\"http:\/\/theresma.spaces.live.com\/blog\/cns!80EE15D075B65A13!1096.entry?sa=375973263\">published a fake peer-review journal<\/a>. [<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/gersonk\" title=\"Gerson K\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Thudfactor has an interesting post <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thudfactor.com\/science\/the-myth-of-competition\/\">about the myth of competition<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">We sometimes speak of evolutionary strategies, but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153strategy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a poor metaphor. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no strategy involved. Mutation is random \u00e2\u20ac\u201d at least, we think so. Suggesting that an infectious disease won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mutate into something deadly because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a poor strategy for victory assumes that viruses have something akin to a five-year plan. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that far. Viruses probably don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m certain they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t caucus to establish behaviors for all of virus-kind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Sure, it&#8217;s survival of the fittest, but &#8220;fittest&#8221; can mean so many different things.<\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Now this is interesting: <a href=\"http:\/\/metatalk.metafilter.com\/17671\/Bueller#641748\"><i>The Fight Club<\/i> Theory of Ferris Bueller&#8217;s Day Off<\/i><\/a>. Spoilers for both movies, so be forewarned. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cynical-c.com\/\" title=\"Cynical-C\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">And finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bostonglobe\/ideas\/brainiac\/2009\/04\/the_neuropsycho.html\">the neuropsychology of zombies<\/a>. [<a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanavan.blogspot.com\/\" title=\"Gerry Canavan\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The AV Club&#8217;s Josh Modell on the difficulty with giving reviews a letter grade. There&#8217;s a healthy discussion there, but I think Keith Phipps sums it up nicely in the comments: When I write I know the grade I&#8217;m assigning the movie\/tv show\/album helps me frame my thoughts. But, in the end, it&#8217;s the thoughts &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3433\">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-3433","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\/3433"}],"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=3433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}