Palin said that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience and she was laughed at because, well, it’s an idiotic statement. Now Katie Couric asked her about it and she seemed to dismiss it as just a flippant comment that she’s being made fun of over. Ok, that’d be smart, claim she was taken out of context and move on. But then goes on to defend it!:

(She’s so eloquent and coherent, isn’t she?)

Is she implying that Russia invades Alaska often? Or is she implying that they are about to? Does she realize that Russia is our ally? At least she doesn’t seem to think she’s protecting us from Canada.

I wish Couric had asked her if the governors of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are all foreign policy experts too since they actually touch other countries. Certainly in her teeny tiny brain they are.

Hell, I can see Puget Sound from my house. That makes me a marine biologist. I’ve seen lots and lots of numbers in my life, that makes me a mathematician… or an economist… or, why not, both! I’ve dropped things, that makes me a physicist. I used soap today, that makes me a chemist. I’m listening to music right now, I’m a musician.

When Sarah Palin’s parents told her she can be anything she wants to be, she took them literally. She is dumb. No wonder Republicans think women are inferior, this is what they consider their best and brightest.

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With the Google Maps API two guys just put up a site where anyone can input first hand information on what is happening block by block in New Orleans. This kind of thing simply would not have been possible before the web and web services…. The potential just amazes me.

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I’m slow, but I learned something new today: intel’s hyperthreading appears to the computer as 2 CPUs. Imagine my surprise when I did a ‘cat /proc/cpuinfo’ on a new server and found it had 2 processors! The machine is co-located several miles away (so I couldn’t open it and look for a 2nd processor) and I was very confused when I looked at the picture in the motherboard manual clearly showing only one CPU socket. A little research on the net and I’m smarter about hyperthreading.

I’m normally annoyed by faked things like this and I’m very skeptical of intel’s claims of improved performance in their CPUs, but this time they may be on to something. The new server is a 2.8GHz P4 and is easily twice as fast (running Apache, that is) as another 2.4GHz P4 that lacks hyperthreading, although it should only be ~30% faster due to its faster CPU, faster RAM and faster FSB. I’m impressed.

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We watched a Discovery Channel special on the Gangs Of New York DVD and learned that when policemen formed in NYC they were made fun of (or hated) because their uniforms looked like English policemen. So they eventually trimmed their uniforms down to just their badge on their chest that was made of copper. This is where the term “coppers” (and the shortened “cops”) came from to refer to the police.

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Browsing some new RSS feeds, I come across one of my favorite columns ever: The Straight Dope. And I find that my understanding of “passive-aggressive” is wrong. Cecil says it applies to people who are just lazy. This makes no sense to me. I’ve always thought it meant someone who tries to get their way (acts aggressively) but does so without being overtly aggressive (passive).

Here’s two cases of what I would call “passive-aggressive” behavior that I’ve experienced. What are these called if not passive-aggressive?

1.) Our neighbor once walked up to us and asked “Do you feed your dogs? If you don’t feed them, I’d be happy to continue to feed them for you.” She discovered that one of our dogs would eat food when offered (have you ever seen a dog say “No thanks, I’m really stuffed”?) and/or ate her cat’s food that was left outside all day.

2.) At a restaurant Whistler in Canada, after two shockingly bad attempts at making a Manhattan, the waiter brought the ingredients to our table and asked Gay if she would like to make her own Manhattan.

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Wal-Mart is responsible for getting UPC bar codes into every product sold in the US. I learned this from a great article on RFIDs. If you don’t know what an RFID is and you care at all about your privacy, read the article because Wal-Mart will also get RFIDs put into every product you buy in the US.

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What I learned today: Unix admins are still arrogant jerks.

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The term “soap opera” came from Procter & Gamble’s idea to create day-time television shows as vehicles to advertise cleaning products to women.

Also, the other day, I learned that Soft Cell’s Tainted Love is not an original song, it is a remake of Gloria Jones‘ Tainted Love.

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