How do you check if an ip address is blacklisted by one of the various DNS Blackhole Lists?

It's sort of easy, you reverse the address (say it was 1.2.3.4), and append the blacklist's address (say blacklist.example.net), and then do a dns lookup (of 4.3.2.1.blacklist.example.net). If the address is not found, chances are the blacklist hasn't heard of them, otherwise they're probably scum.

I've talked about blocking these parasites before, so here's a chunk of code I use in a few places to spot them. It's called blacklist.py and I think it's simple enough to use:

import blacklist
if blacklist.blacklisted("1.2.3.4") == 1:
  print("scum")
else:
  print("ok")

Update: Thanks to Blackie for spotting the typo in the above example (5 lines of code and I still make a mistake). Now fixed.

There was an interesting prgramme last night on UK television following the progress of a scientist investigating whether a virus could cause obesity.

It poses an interesting and selfish question though; if being obese can be caused by a virus, can one catch it from a fat person?

If this is the case, obese people are going to be actively avoided by society, which is rather ironic if one had assumed that the basic premise of this scientist's research was to prove that fat people were blameless for their state. One can imagine the situation on the infamous Clapham omnibus: "Oi, fatty, piss-off! Don't sit next to me, I don't watch to catch your belly!"...