Book Of Norm

This is from CMU, actually from a 2001 exploration in the Canadian arctic. But in terms of interest in exploring other planets, I found it very interesting. What is sun-synchronous navigation? Sun-synchronous navigation is a technique that involves tracking the sun while exploring terrain. It is accomplished by traveling opposite to planetary rotation and in synchrony with the sun to always remain in sunlight. Robotic explorers on the planets and moons can employ sun-synchronous navigation to maintain continual exposure to sunlight to acquire the power necessary to sustain operation for extended periods of time. By setting their speed appropriate to their latitude and navigating to avoid shadows cast by local terrain, these solar-powered robots will be able to operate continuously. Furthermore for some missions, by following the dawn (specifically by lagging...

The Burj Dubai is almost completed, and it is just incredible. This is an actual picture of the almost finished tower, which will stand 2,684ft tall. For an idea of how amazing that is... 1mile=5,280ft 5,280/2=2,640 2,684 > 2,640 Burj Dubai > 1/2 mile Which is just out of control. "Skyscrapers" next to it look like little lincoln log toys.

for those of us who use gchat (inside gmail), which admittedly I dont very often, there is now the ability to send free text messages. Something Yahoo and AIM have had for a while, so this is none too surprising but still welcome news. Currently in beta so you have to turn it on through google labs in your settings.

If the GM/Chrysler merger goes ahead - well, less of a merger than GM buying out the collapsing Chrysler, which is amusing enough given the share price and cash hemorrhaging of GM - it is likely they will eliminate essentially all of the pentastar's models. Which would really be too bad, because I like quite a few of them. The only ones likely to remain are the Dodge Ram, a couple Jeeps including the Wrangler, and the Chrysler minivans, which have always been class leaders in a segment where GM has been the perennial kid in the corner. My guess is the Viper would live on, probably by being sold to Saleen, Rouch, or Shelby. It would be very sad to see the 300, Charger, and of course, the brand new Challenger go to waste, as Chrysler was the company which brought back (in my opinion) big, bold, brash, and beautiful american cars. On the other hand, the Sebring, Avenger, Nitro, Caliber, Durango/Aspen, Dakota, PT Cruiser and definitely the Crossfire do not deserve to live. Wait and see...

From Popsci's best of whats new: TRAFFIC TRENDS When trying to calculate the fastest route, most GPS units assume that you can drive the maximum speed allowed. For traffic-clogged streets, the Go 730’s maps include data on the average speed that cars have actually traveled on a road over the past year. TomTom Go 730 $450; tomtom.com

So Asus, inventors of the netbook segment, claim they will have a $200 unit for sale next year. At that price, the things start to make sense, though I will stick to my n770, especially as I just found out it has a built in thumboard typing option which is way better than the stylus.

Richard Noble - the Brit behind the Thrust, Thrust II, and Thrust SSC (the latter two being the most famous land speed record cars of recent times) is gearing up for another challenge. Even though the SSC shattered the sound barrier, and no one in the ten years since it has happened has even tried to come close to that mark, they are looking to push the bar up again, and this time by a lot. The goal is 1,000mph. In their words: ""The 12.8m long, 6,422kg (fueled), jet and rocket-powered vehicle will be more advanced than most spacecraft and faster than a bullet fired from a handgun. Its 900mm diameter wheels will spin at over 10,000rpm, generating 50,000 radial g at the rim. The car will accelerate from 0 – 1,050mph in 40 seconds and at V-max (maximum velocity), the pressure of air bearing down on its carbon fibre and titanium bodywork will exceed twelve tonnes per square metre. At this speed, Andy Green will be covering a distance equivalent to over four football pitches ever...

Fundamental research is often highly valuable in terms of long term economic growth. When nations want to get ahead (or to catch up) they focus R&D spending onto areas of interest. The US is not the leading nation in the world as a percentage of GDP (though thanks to our vast GDP, we are still the biggest R&D spender.) It is still among the leading nations however. In an interesting shift, the private sector has come to provide more of the R&D money. Some complain that this shifts the spending to later in the process: companies do not pay for basic research. But I do not think that is true, and I am dubious about the involvement of the government in the first place. However, in a not very encouraging trend, we have become advanced technology importers. Now, I dont know enough about this graph, but it is said to include medical equipment, robots and aerospace items. I wonder how much of this is tied to Airbus alone, and I am not a believer in protecting US industry. Rather...

Hubble is back up and running:

The Iraq war, whatever opinion you have of it, has had the effect of destroying global public opinion of the US. This is a very costly exercise on a number of fronts, and not just for tourists traveling abroad. The ability of the US to exercise power and influence world events has been severely constricted by the negative wave of sentiment generated by the conflict. This piece is simply a poignant article on Berlin, logically a long-time stronghold of US support, given how the US protected the city (along, to a lesser degree with the UK and France) for the entirety of the Cold War. Today, only 31% of Berliners are positive towards the US. WITNESS: Berliners' love affair with America grows cold Thu Oct 30, 2008 12:30am EDT Erik Kirschbaum, a U.S. citizen, has lived in German-speaking Europe for most of the past 26 years, and for 16 of them has worked as a Reuters correspondent in Germany. In the following story, he reports on the changing attitudes of Berliners toward his home co...

Surprising I have not posted on this one before, but thinking on what happened to the WRX (the best car Subaru ever made, and one of the best performance bargains, and most fun cars to drive of the last 10 years) makes me very sad. The new one looks like this: Which is just about as boring as a car with a hood scoop can look. To try and make things a little better for 2009 over this the 2008 model, they made the regular WRX look like the STI (the basically right off the rally course boy-racer ricer special). Which just adds a lot of crap like blacked out mesh etc. Which makes it look like this: Still crappy. The only good thing they did is up the horsepower by 40. Which they needed to, considering the hp rating had been the same since the WRX launched, and the new model was 200lb heavier. Basically its a bloated crappy version of the old WRX. Which, at its best, looked like this, a mad crazy bulldog of a car: Sad, sad loss.

Not surprising I suppose, but the latest military poll shows a 71% support for McCain. This is at the same time that House and Senate Democrats have blocked bills allowing the faster and easier submission and counting of military absentee ballots -- according to CNN an estimated 2/3rds of which will never actually be counted. One that always gets me is that the "failure" in Iraq is blamed on the Republicans (Bush), and yet the military consistently supports the Republican candidate. I know that there are a lot of reasons behind this, but to me it takes a lot of the wind out of the sails of the Obama campaign (as their main stated objective in ending the Iraq war is to get our troops home, not an argument such as realpolitik or military spending etc.)

For a little while today VW became the largest company in the world, because porsche announced they would buy up 75% of the company, and for a while the shares broke €1000. Which is just crazy, and it became worth more than Exxon. Wild times, especially considering the valuations of Ford and GM right now.

Right now woot is having a wootoff. That means items are sold one after another instead of one per day. Its only happens every couple months, and it is a "big deal," with many thousands of wooters hitting F5 as fast as their index fingers can manage. What I find interesting is that certain items sell out on the wootoff that did not sell out when they were originally sold on woot, at the same price. Now, most items are leftovers that did not sell in the daily sales, and so their prices are even further reduced, one reason the wootoff is so popular. But some items, they dont change the the price at all, and they still sell out. Its a feeding frenzy, the only explanation, and not exactly a rational one. (the only other argument would be more buyers, but I dont buy that, as everyone in a wootoff checks woot every day, I guarantee.)

So netbooks are all the rage. Starting with the EEE PC from Asus, the market has exploded over the last year, with basically everyone and their Mom releasing a netbook. Generally about $300-600, with a 7-10 inch screen, they look like a laptop that you put through the dryer one too many times. And that is basically how they perform as well, many shipping with Linux or an Win XP option, they can handle firefox and that is about it. I dont think, for me, this is the right mix. I like having a full featured, full-powered laptop that can do anything and everything I want it to. And for going to work, going on a business trip, etc. it is not that big a deal to carry around a laptop bag. Then there is the "I just need to use the internet/write a few emails" scenario, and for that, I think a full internet phone (basically the iPhone right now) or a mobile internet device (MID), such as the N770 (the first such device ever.. basically) which I have, or a slew of newer or upcoming de...

Still a lot of issues with this one, and I dont think that it really is realistic, but a big step towards the possible effective used of hydrogen as an energy transportation system was made yesterday in Korea. A research institute claims to be able to achieve the separation of hydrogen using only 0.1kwh of energy compared to the traditional 4 - 4.5kwh required with electrolysis. But right now, its just a claim, and we'll have to wait and see how things pan out.

So, sometime I will write more on why exactly we got where we are today, but a lot of it is because of the Clinton Administration and Democrats pressures on Freddie and Fannie to make and take bad loans... here is an excerpt of now NY AG Cuomo arguing for the Clinton move to expand "affirmative action" lending... "Andrew Cuomo, then Bill Clinton’s HUD Secretary, held a press conference on April 6, 1998, explaining a settlement reached with a major bank on a lending discrimination case based presumably on the CRA. Cuomo brags about how “this administration will enforce the law”, but he also makes a very telling admission about the $2.1 billion in subprime loans that the bank would offer as a result of the settlement: "They would not have qualifed but for the affirmative action on the part of the bank, yes" then "He then admits that there would be “higher risk”, and a higher default rate, on the loans the Clinton administration forced this bank to make. He a...

We are running out of solar wind! Ok, that is not true at all. But there is less of it now then there was a little while ago, but because we still know basically nothing about our sun (due to various botched attempts at actually sending a probe over there -- something we have never done), we really have no idea why this is happening. Much like our atmosphere here on Earth, the solar wind protects the solar system from the deadly radiation that saturates deep space. It does this by hurling ions in every direction, at 1 million miles per hour, all the time. Scientists believe the solar wind stops about 90% of the radiation from reaching the planets housed within the termination shock, which is basically the area inside the solar wind. The trouble is these winds have fallen to their weakest levels in 50 years. In the past 10 years, the wind's intensity weakened by about 25%. We dont really know exactly how this affects life on earth, why it is happening, if it will reverse course or ...

Looking at Russia, to get a bailout from the $560 billion in gov reserves accumulated over the last 10 years (ever since the oligarchs had to bail out the govt. when it defaulted on $30 billion in debt.. oil has done a lot for the country...) you basically have to hand the keys of the company over to Putin. The general terms that companies are getting are that to take govt. money the govt. will then have total future control over all funding decisions for the company, deciding when and how you will be able to raise capital. Controlling the purse strings in this manner will obviously give Putin huge control over many firms which he has not yet reigned in. Scary. All we can hope for is that oil prices stabilize somewhere near a new norm of $30-60 per-barrel, and Russia/Iran/Venezuela etc. no longer see the major windfalls they have been thriving on. But private enterprise and true capitalism in Russia? That is dead. In Mother Russia, bailout eats you.

In an alternative to alternative fuels, there is the free piston engine. An old idea, it is basically that the pistons are free floating in a cylinder. Turns out it aint so good at driving something (notice the pistons not being attached to anything part.) But... when you mix it together with my favorite Faraday flaslight.. you get very efficient and compact energy generation (with the side effect of being very loud, something they are working on.) This is a long way away from becoming anything, but should be interesting... + =

They found the tomb of the real Gladiator.. which is sweet. One of the most important finds of Roman history in 20 or 30 years. I wonder if he was actually as badass as Russell Crowe... actually.. I think good ol Russell would have a pretty tough time of it..

Yeah, I love debates. The best part about them was that it was an argument with a clear objective and a defined geography. Actually the best part about it was that there was a winner. How many times can you say that you actually win an intellectual debate? You can say all the right things, tear their argument to shreds, but usually your opponent will throw up a final wall of irrational closed-mindedness that is impossible to get past. Yet in a debate, this is not the case, as there is a judge at the end of it all proclaiming the victory of one set of ideas over another. Its a grand 'ol time. But I did not even watch the debate last night. I would not fall into the category of "undecided" voters, and so some would say it does not matter. More correctly, I would fall into the category of disappointed voters, as there is very little being said that I actually support. School reform is good, finishing what we started in Iraq is good, lots of other things are good, but basical...

There have been requests for recepies on this blog.. so here goes. Ingredients: 1lb of ground beef. 80/20 or better 1lb of pasta - any kind you which, though penne and spaghetti are the best 1 16oz+ bottle of ketchup 1 bottle of cranberry juice (cran-cherry ok, cran-grape not as good) Oregano Parmesan Cheese Optional Ingredients: Red peppers onions green peppers mushrooms (I would never put these in) Red wine - replaces the cranberry juice Red tomato paste - makes it all a different consistency Hot or sweet Italian sausage - pre cooked - mixes in very well with the overall dish Italian spices Garlic Its a very robust recipe, and so can be endlessly altered to change it around. Even altering the basic proportions lead to very different tasting meals, and playing with extra ingredients can really change things around. Directions: First brown the ground beef in a frying pan, one with high sides works well as you will be adding sauce to it. ...

Clarkson, beloved car show host, has gotten injured in his first major crash in 31 years of car reporting. Which is both terrible and somewhat amazing, given what he does on a daily basis. However, it seems things are not too bad, with Clarkson, in full form, stating: "My right index finger looked like a burst sausage, my left shin was fatter than my thigh and my back felt like someone had driven over it with a pile-driver." Hopefully this will not slow him down too much, though I doubt it will.

WTF. They dont know which way is up. Yes we are going into a recession, but that has already been priced in... thats why stocks have fallen across the board in the last year, not just because a credit crises is bad for Wall St.

...even if it means turning a crappy one into a good one. The Cobalt is crappy, not the tsunami of crappiness that was the Cavalier, but still, not something anyone with an IQ over 85 would buy. That said, there are obviously people at GM who know how to build an actually good car. My guess is kind of like monasteries in the dark ages, they all went and huddled together in the Corvette building until the bad times went away... basically from 1973 to 2007. And now, they build this: Click above for high-res gallery of the 2009 Chevy Cobalt SS Turbo The first-gen Cobalt SS failed to deliver with a supercharged 2.0L Ecotec four-cylinder producing 205 horsepower and a cast of supporting components that did little to hide the Cobalt's rental car roots. But then something entirely unexpected happened. The GM Performance Division completely reworked the Cobalt SS for 2008, swapping in a more powerful turbocharged engine, upgrading the rest of the mechanicals, and tweaking the entire packag...

Click above for a larger image of Mr. Norm's Super Challenger From Autoblog: The new Dodge Challenger is offering tuners one of the hottest platforms to work with since the Mustang in 2005, and there will no doubt be plenty of different variations on the floor at SEMA in just a few weeks. We don't know if we'll be able to spot them all, but we are definitely going to be keeping our eyes out for these two bad boys built by Mr. Norm's Garage. Who's Mr. Norm, you ask? He's the legendary owner of Grand Spaulding Dodge that was famous for building some of the fastest Mopars in the country. Mr. Norm is now working his magic on the current Dodge lineup, and will be be showcasing the two Challengers you see here. The Super Challenger features a supercharged version of the 6.1L Hemi putting out 900 tire-shredding horsepower plus Rodtana forged wheels, Hotchkis suspension upgrades, massive SSBC brakes, and a custom front spoiler and side scoops. The other Challenger fea...

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. - Richard Feynman

From James: GM is the 20th largest auto-trader, at 4bn, 40 times behind VW at 159 billion.

Sign of the Times: National Debt Clock Runs Out of Digits The clock has run out on the national debt. The National Debt Clock. (Associated Press) The national debt clock, the unofficial tracker of the federal deficit maintained by the Durst Organization in New York, has reached its limits. Last month, as the national debt exceeded $10 trillion for the first time, the clock ran out of digits to record the number. The dollar sign in the clock had to be deleted and replaced with a one to record the massive number. The clock's owners say a new model — with space for two extra digits — will be in place early next year. Now the debt clock will be able to reach the quadrillions. Hopefully, that's not a level that will be breached any time soon. –Phil Izzo

It looks to me that there was a massive selloff as the DOW30 dropped below 9,000. Probably algo trades, and then momentum trades, but we are down and still going down, currently down 657 points, and still dropping...   Dow Jones Industrial Average $DJI:Dow Jones Global Indexes Sector: N/A Industry: N/A 8,600.53 -657.57   -7.10% 1,359,753,000 Last Trade as of 3:49 PM ET 10/9/08 Trade Add to Watchlist Last Change  /  % Change Volume S&P Ranking Set Alerts Summary News Charts Options Fundamentals Insiders Earnings Financials SEC Filings Time Range Upper Indicators Lower Indicators Chart Style Compare Events Tools Options Remove