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29 Dec 2010 11:03

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Politics: Tucker Carlson: Michael Vick should’ve been executed (!!!)

  • Yo, Tucker: What Michael Vick did was awful, and we’re sure he realizes the error of his ways … but come on. Execution? Exe-freaking-cution? In other news, we haven’t been to The Daily Caller in months. Is that site still around? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Dec 2010 10:54

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Politics: Cory Booker’s Twitter success: Surprisingly, there’s no imitator yet

  • Booker’s Twitter tactics have raised the bar for other local officials, and beg the question: In the aftermath of the snowpocalypse, are other northeastern officials grabbing a shovel and smart phone, and following Booker’s lead? It certainly doesn’t look like it.
  • Time’s Sean Gregory • Noting the success Newark Mayor Cory Booker has had in using social media to govern his city during a major disaster. While things haven’t been perfect – Gregory notes that it’s fair to criticize Booker’s administration for being ill-equipped to handle the snow ahead of time – Booker’s work has made all the more impressive due to the fact that other big-city mayors have been unable or unwilling to use social media in anywhere near the same way. Protip to mayoral administrations: Sanitized feeds suck. (Now’s a good time to mention that Portland, Oregon mayor Sam Adams has a pretty decent Tumblr account.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Dec 2010 10:32

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World: Bad idea: South Korea working on unification plans with the North

  • Let’s say you’re South Korea. North of you is one of the world’s most volatile countries, North Korea, and they’re your sworn enemy. West of you is China, the 900-pound gorilla of Asia. Now, let’s say you’re the president of South Korea, like this guy in the middle here, Lee Myung-bak. How do you handle this situation in such a way as to anger both of them at once? Here’s how – bring up plans to unify the two Koreas. Could you guys at least wait until Kim Jong-il is dead and his frumpy kid who skated into the job is the leader? You know they have the bomb, right? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Dec 2010 10:11

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World: Danish newspaper targeted over rage-inducing Mohammed cartoons

  • 5 arrested over plot over five-year-old cartoons; attention span ≠ short source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Dec 2010 10:04

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Offbeat: Prison inmate makes vague statement about doing cool thing

  • This is the last thing I thought I would be doing when I came to prison.
  • Nevada inmate James Redmon • Regarding his gig training wild mustangs in prison. Which we admit is pretty darn cool. But it sounds like he could be talking about doing something else, doesn’t it? (Re: The link in that last sentence – yeah, we know, terrible movie, right? But we still heart Bob Odenkirk and Will Arnett.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Dec 2010 09:55

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World: Not willing to share: China limiting exports of rare earth minerals

China produces 97 percent of the world’s rare-earth materials, used in all sorts of ways. But now China doesn’t want to share so much anymore – and other countries are pissed. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Dec 2010 01:14

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Biz: After spurning Google, Groupon plans massive financing round

  • $950
    million     the amount in financing that the IPO-pondering Groupon wants
  • $7.8
    billion     the value of the company based on that financing round source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

29 Dec 2010 00:50

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U.S.: Virginia has laughably awful history textbooks, just an FYI

  • mistake A Virginia-oriented history book called “Our Virginia: Past and Present” suggested that African-Americans fought for the South in the Civil War, causing a huge uproar over the claim, which has long been refuted.
  • f*#&-up A study of the history book by professional historians found that there were many obvious facts that were simply wrong in the book and others with the same publisher. The book, by the way, was not written by a historian. Oops. source
  • » A couple random examples: Peer reviewers found that “Our Virginia” and other books from the same textbook publisher said that the U.S. entered World War I a year earlier than it actually did, that Civil War soldiers commonly wore full suits of armor, and that New Orleans began on a U.S. harbor (instead of a Spanish one). It’s a book so good, it makes you feel dumber when reading it.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Dec 2010 22:54

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Tech: Nerds devise crazy way to make computers insanely fast

  • [Field Programmable Gate Arrays] are not used within standard computers because they are fairly difficult to program but their processing power is huge while their energy consumption is very small because they are so much quicker – so they are also a greener option.
  • University of Glagsow researcher Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede • On the amazing technological discovery he and a team have discovered – a method of creating computer chips that runs 20 times faster than modern computers, and can fit 1,000 cores (rather than one or two) on a single processor. Basically if this actually gets on a real consumer-purchasable computer in the next few years, Moore’s Law will be matched – and then some. The programming issue is kind of a big deal – if they can figure out a way to make these mega-processors convenient to program, it could be a huge deal and a major computing breakthrough. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Dec 2010 22:25

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Offbeat: Annoying kid: “I wanna be in Florida getting a tan on my back!”

  • We sense a meme coming on. The level of annoyance that 8-year-old Alexander Wright has about being forced to use his iPod while being stuck in the airport is epic. We want to let this kid to know that it gets better. You will get to Florida someday. (Thanks Adam Griffiths) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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