{"id":5847,"date":"2011-01-20T18:30:26","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T23:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5847"},"modified":"2011-01-20T15:14:58","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T20:14:58","slug":"thursday-various-59","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5847","title":{"rendered":"Thursday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I don&#8217;t know why I find <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hackingnetflix.com\/2011\/01\/you-can-return-netflix-dvds-while-traveling.html\">this<\/a> particularly interesting, but I do:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>The post office ignores the return address for Netflix DVDs and sorts them separately for a Netflix truck to pick them up early in the morning for processing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Discs are shipped back to the nearest processing facility, regardless of the address on the return envelope; that address is there just for legal reasons, apparently. This seems like something I maybe sort of already knew, but it&#8217;s a reminder of the volume they (and by extension the post office) have to process.<\/li>\n<li>John Seavey&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/fraggmented.blogspot.com\/2011\/01\/open-letter-to-zombie-story-writers.html\">Open Letter to Zombie Story Writers<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>In essence, the human body is a machine, like an automobile. You are trying to describe the ways this machine can malfunction to produce a specific effect, and that&#8217;s good, but please stop explaining to me how it keeps going without wheels, gasoline, or a functioning engine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He raises some interesting points, although I don&#8217;t think they apply to the &#8220;zombies&#8221; in films like <i>28 Days Later<\/i>, as he seems to. At least from my recollection &#8212; and I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5422\">re-watched the movie<\/a> pretty recently &#8212; the infected population there a) don&#8217;t act at all like George Romeroesque zombies (i.e., no human flesh, no brains), and b) don&#8217;t continue acting beyond physically believable limits. Beyond normal pain tolerances, sure &#8212; there&#8217;s the one guy who keeps running even though he&#8217;s literally on fire &#8212; but into the realm of sheer impossibility.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;What is, come with me if you want to live, Alex?&#8221; So you may have heard: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2011\/01\/13\/ibms-watson-supercomputer-destroys-all-humans-in-jeopardy-pract\/\">a computer<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blastr.com\/2011\/01\/ibm-computer-wins-at-jeop.php\">has won at <i>Jeopardy<\/i><\/a>. (There goes that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/I_Lost_on_Jeopardy\">Weird Al<\/a> remix idea!) I&#8217;m still looking forward to the televised rematch next month, though perhaps not so much to the subsequent robot apocalypse.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s worth it for <i>Goodnight Dune<\/i> alone: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.collegehumor.com\/article:1811404\">Five Sci-Fi Children&#8217;s Books<\/a>. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\" title=\"Tor.com\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>And finally, Jeff VanderMeer on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffvandermeer.com\/2010\/12\/08\/everything-you-need-to-know-to-be-a-fiction-writer\">Everything You Need to Know to be a Fiction Writer<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know why I find this particularly interesting, but I do: The post office ignores the return address for Netflix DVDs and sorts them separately for a Netflix truck to pick them up early in the morning for processing. Discs are shipped back to the nearest processing facility, regardless of the address on the &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5847\">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":[16,86,35,44,14,38,143,17,10,12,24],"class_list":["post-5847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books","tag-computers","tag-games","tag-mail","tag-movies","tag-science","tag-science-fiction","tag-tv","tag-various","tag-writing","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5847"}],"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=5847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}