Intelligence

Some days, I really wonder whether I'm actually smart or not. I'm unconvinced that being interested in a wide variety of subjects and having a good memory has any relation to intelligence. I rarely have thoughts that seem clever or unusual--to me, they merely seem like logical conclusions anyone could reach.

On the other hand, today I was thinking about the economic implications of the CFA franc (multistate African currency locked to the French franc and subsequently the euro) and the economic-political consequences for these countries of having their monetary policy dictated by the ECB. I'm sure really dumb people don't even bother to think about that. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure how to get good information on this and I suspect my knowledge of economics might not be good enough to understand technical information on it anyway. I ought to get an economics textbook. I know the basics, but I last studied it 10 years ago and my knowledge since then is mainly from The Economist.

(There was a reason for this conjecture; I'd been reading about African history and poverty.)

typical Independent

In today's US facts and figures, they said that Jews are 1% of the US population. That would be under 3 million. Most estimates of the Jewish population are between 5 and 6 million. (Jewish Virtual Library says 5.9M, but that sounds a little high.)

Hey... there are few enough of us as it is... we don't need undercounting! I suppose it's better than the UK map last week, which didn't include Jews at all, presumably because we're less than 1% of the population.

Yom Ha'atzmaut Sameach!

Regardless of the pain of the past year and our opinions of the current government, I still believe the establishment of Medinat Yisrael (Reishit Tzmichat Geulateinu :) ) is something to celebrate. Hope those who celebrated it had a good one!

More Independent

they have mis-spelt Oregon ("Oregan") and Illinois ("Illnois") on the small map on the outside :)

Oh, and Maryland ("Marryland")! And the capital of Indiana is "Indiana", not Indianapolis. The capital of North Dakota is Bismarck, not "Bismark".

ETA: They also reprinted all the facts for Alabama under Wisconsin.

*blinks*

E4 played the first 10 minutes of Desperate Housewives, broke to commercial, and then started from the beginning again....

(Aside from which, this whole Gabby and Carlos plotline doesn't make much sense. If they're willing to stump up money for a dodgy adoption, why don't they go overseas? They're Latino, it's not like they're fixated on having a perfect blonde baby. Are you going to tell me they couldn't go to Latin America? Especially when abortion is illegal in many Latin countries.)

(Hmm. Just cut to commercial in the middle of a scene. I hope they haven't gone to where they should be had the episode continued as normal!)