Book Of Norm

Recent research shows that cows are trying to take over the earth. Actually, it shows that on average 20 Americans are killed every year by cows. Which basically means that the cows are providing a valuable service by culling the gene pool and creating Darwin award winners. Lesson to all: cow tipping may be entertaining, but one tip too far and the heifers will turn on you..

Cash for clunkers ran through $1 billion in a few days. Now, congress is authorizing another $2 billion to keep it going... get your trades in now folks, because it wont take long.. However, if you are attached to your car, be aware that they replace the oil with silica and fun the engine until it is dead. Then they shred your car. So say goodby to Eleanor.

First, the breaking news: Michael Schumacher will return to F1 for the remainder of the series. Apparently not satisfied with developing cars, winning Moto GP races, and other such 'retired' activities, the robot will return to a very very different F1 to the one that he left. This is all sadly because of a piece of debris which struck Massa in the head and damaged his eye. Hopefully, he will make a recovery for next year as he is a very strong driver, but in the meantime a legend will fill his boots. It is a tricky thing though coming out of retirement. Schumacher faces in many ways much more of a challenge than Lance Armstrong did: it would be as if they added 10lbs to the bike on top of 3 years retirement. Ferrari has yet to win a race and though it just secured its first 2nd place finish, it has a long way to go to catch up with Brawn GP or even Red Bull. What that means is Schumacher is coming into a F1 Ferrari team which is not the dominant powerhouse, but a struggling al...

An Abu Dhabi investment firm has just bought a third of Virgin Galactic for $280 million, thus valuing the venture at $840 million. Which isn't bad, considering there are no profits. The Abu Dhabi firm will build their own spaceport in the UAE, so this is really more of an expansion than a simple investment. I hope all of this rapidly gets regulatory approval, because I am a big fan of anything which speeds up private space flight.

Hilarious article from the Onion.. the new iPhone 3Gi, which you can only see if you truly believe... http://www.theonion.com/content/news/apple_claims_new_iphone_only?utm_source=a-section SAN FRANCISCO—In a move expected to revolutionize the mobile device industry, Apple launched its fastest and most powerful iPhone to date Tuesday, an innovative new model that can only be seen by the company's hippest and most dedicated customers. "I am proud today to introduce to those who really, truly deserve it, our most incredible iPhone yet," announced Apple CEO Steve Jobs, extending his seemingly empty left palm toward the eagerly awaiting crowd. "Not only is this our lightest and slimmest model ever, but as any truly savvy Apple customer can clearly see, it's also the most handsome product we've ever designed." The packed auditorium, which had been listening to Jobs in hushed reverence for several minutes, then erupted into applause, with hundreds of men an...

I hate the fact that NJ is corrupt to its core. I hate the fact that there are all kinds of crappy housing developments near where I grew up in NJ and it really pisses me off that a lot of those were built using loopholes in zoning which were probably created by bribery. NJ could be a great state, if it was not run by a bunch of corrupt mob influenced lowlifes. The FBI probe was interesting more than shocking, and a confirmation of what I already believed about NJ local and state politics. NJ politicians will be getting a hard rap, but it is also interesting to think about the racial implications for Jews, and Rabbi's in particular. A number of rabbi's getting arrested for money laundering using religious organizations does not exactly help the stereotype.

So after rejecting Microsoft a few times (dumb), and with Jerry Wang now gone (good), Yahoo finally agreed on a deal with Microsoft. In the meantime the big M has gone and built a search engine which is equivalent to google, and so has a decent shot at actually growing market share. The deal means yahoo search will be powered by Bing, and yahoo will do the marketing for yahoo and bing combined, leading to better economies of scale. A good deal all around, and a credible alternative to google for users and advertisers - I will likely be signing my company up for the new service in the near future.

Got back last night after getting my Palm Pre and watched a little television while I added contacts and played with the OS and all that. Then, I saw something that almost made me want to return my phone in case people started to think I was an LSD taking alien with translucent skin. I speak of course of the Palm Pre commercials. This one in particular was some incoherent mumbling about previous lives. It was, in one word, freaky. Please Palm, I want more that 45 apps in the app store - I want people to actually buy this thing so I can get the benefit of developers wanting to write stuff for webOS. Please stop the scary weird glowing freaky lady from appearing on the TV anymore.

Writing this from my palm pre. Initial impressions a very good. Browser is solid and the OS is friggen sweet. More updates to come.

This graph - from the UN - shows where and how it is possible to fight carbon emissions cost effectively. The latest bill focuses on the far right of the scale.

Obama actually said "I will not sign a bill that will add to the national deficit." Can someone please hold him to that? The amazing thing about his incredibly annoying, obfuscating, and frustrating speech last night was that he was trying to sell the socialist healthcare bill as something with 0 cost. No cost in terms of freedom, no cost in terms of care, no cost in terms of this nations debt. Instead he tried to claim that it would give more choice, better care, and at lower cost. Of course, that goes against every reasonable estimate of the plan produced, including by his own budget office, but he's part of the pantheon of gods and rules by divine right, so what does it matter, he said it so it is true.

A year ago, with oil at $150/bl the Russians started bragging how they were going to built a modern aircraft carrier equipped navy. Today, they are admitting they cant even keep up with retirements of old ships from the fleet. In a statement that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago: "In a recent conversation with reporters, Admiral Vysotsky said Russia is considering joint ventures with the French (to build aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships), and the possible purchase of submarines from Germany." The purchase of submarines from Germany is especially interesting. Germany makes one of the most popular export subs: the Type 212, which is an advanced and well respected diesel attack sub with an optional AIP (Air Independent Propulsion) based on a fuel cell. The thing is, Russia had already built a successor to its popular and cheap Kilo class diesel sub - the Lada, which started sea trials in 2004. Why then would they be buying German (especially when a ...

Obama will talk tonight on his healthcare plan. He will either demand the legislature pass the bill before the recess (ram it down the throat of America) or he will actually wait rather than risk losing support in congress. I hope for the latter. I think there needs to be universal coverage. But not in this way, not through this bill. The industry has had solutions on the table for some time, but they have been ignored. Instead we are facing a plan that will break the financial back of this nation - or at the very least contribute to its slow economic weakening. From a NYT Op-Ed: "The House bill adds $239 billion to the federal deficit during the first 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would pummel small businesses with an 8 percent payroll penalty. It would jack America’s top tax rate above those in Italy and France. Top earners in New York and California would be giving more than 55 percent of earnings to one government entity or another." From a NY...

head on over to woot.com - its a wootoff (though I think woot is not what it was, a wootoff is still a big deal..)

Happy 40th anniversary of walking on the moon, mankind. Of course, we have not made it back to the Moon since before cable TV, let alone PC's, the Internet, and cellphones. Right now the public is being asked to pony up the cash to head back to the rock in orbit around us, and they are asking why. In 1969 NASA was over 5% of the federal budget (a budget that was a lower % of GDP). Today it is well less than 1%. In terms of costs, getting back to the moon would be less than 5% of the Iraq war so far, less than the bailout of GM, less than 1% of the total cost of the US bailout. Yet, I understand why it does not capture hearts and minds. Today, on the 4oth anniversary of "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" the big news out of the ISS? They managed to fix a toilet. Seriously. There are 13 people up there right now - the record for the most humans in space at the same time - but the news was that one of three toilets broke. They did a spacewalk, mostly to ins...

Moto's RAZR amazed the world with its ridiculous thinness and overall sleek design. You could slip it into the pocket of your ultra-low-rise jeans or even the shirt pocket of your popped-collar polo and no-one would notice. And yet it had all the features you really wanted. We've done ultra-thin for years now and it is wearing t... you get it. Instead, the hot new thing is to have a large rounded touchscreen computer in your pocket, which also happens to be a cellphone. Unless you are one of the many people who still like thin, light, and unobtrusive. And for you is the watchphone. Though it will be initially targeted at the larger-wristed half of the population, the watchphone is the ultimate evolution in small, light, unobtrusive, etc etc. Of course, the downside is really that you have to pair it with a bluetooth headset to talk, which could become a pain in the ass if you dont like wandering around looking like you talk to spirits, or your friends get really tired of never ...

A little backstory: The Pirate Bay was the biggest and the baddest of all torrent and file sharing sites. It was ostensibly a torrent site, but also had an insane amount of content on its own servers. They rules the interwebs and all cowered before them (well, except the guys who ran it were pretty easy going and Swedish). They started a political party and were doing quite well in Swedish elections (a few % of the vote). Then they got sued by the RIAA of Sweden (basically) and they lost. To pay the bills and to get out of the game, they sold the company (while I was vacationing in the UK - thus no BoN announcement) to a Swedish game developer/internet cafe operator for $7.8 million. The owners of the Pirate Bay get some cash, and the internet looses the strongest supporter of file sharing, ever (TPB was far larger than Napster). Now, they, like napster before them, say they are going legit. Of course "they" is really meaningless in this case, because it is a new team of devs...

http://gizmodo.com/5316455/1979-the-year-we-wussed-out-on-nuclear-power

The Ontario Govt. has announced a plan that will give a $10,000 rebate on the purchase of plug-in hybrids. Seems in line with other such plans over the last ten years... except: The plan was announced at a Toronto Chevy dealer in front of a Chevy Volt, and the plan really only targets the Chevy Volt. Thus it is in reality a $10,000 rebate from the Canadian Govt. on the Volt. And the Canadian Govt. owns 10% of New GM. Toyota in particular is crying foul, as they should. No one really expected the US/Canadian governments would keep the playing ground even when they are both the refs and the owners of a team, but the abuse of power has started quickly it seems.

"Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system." -Cicero When, whether due to clever marketing, collective desire to believe, thruthiness (the highly useful Steven Colbert word for something that just feels true, regardless of whether it is true), or other influences, the mob of public opinion decides something is true it is nearly impossible to change the course of the herd. One of those has been climate change. In modern middle/upper class sensibilities the underlying belief is that each and everyone of us carries the guilt of success wealth and a good life, and we must do something to repay that debt. We must try and make the world a better place, outside of our jobs (and thus outside of the real productivity of our lives, which really does make the world a better place). So we seek out ways in which we can save the world. Climate change has been one of the biggest and most vocal...

C.S. Lewis: Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Smackover, Arkansas... seems to fit, don't it?

This is from PopSci, in anticipation of the 40th anniversary of landing on the Moon (hopefully by the 50th, we have gotten back there...) 1. The Apollo’s Saturn rockets were packed with enough fuel to throw 100-pound shrapnel three miles, and NASA couldn’t rule out the possibility that they might explode on takeoff. NASA seated its VIP spectators three and a half miles from the launchpad. 2. The Apollo computers had less processing power than a cellphone. 3. Drinking water was a fuel-cell by-product, but Apollo 11’s hydrogen-gas filters didn’t work, making every drink bubbly. Urinating and defecating in zero gravity, meanwhile, had not been figured out; the latter was so troublesome that at least one astronaut spent his entire mission on an anti-diarrhea drug to avoid it. 4. When Apollo 11’s lunar lander, the Eagle, separated from the orbiter, the cabin wasn’t fully depressurized, resulting in a burst of gas equivalent to popping a champagne cork. It threw the module’s landing four mil...

This is one of the best sites out there. It is up in the pantheon of laughs with icanhazcheesburger (even though I dont like cats that much, I love that site), and Fail Blog. http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/ Yeah, its the best of Craigslist. And it is hilarious. For example: Cow poop Date: 2009-05-25, 8:30PM EDT We have cows that keep pooping and it's more than we can handle. Every day there is more cow shit piling up and my husband is starting to panic. He works at Jiffy Mart and doesn't have the time to figure out what to do with all of it. I work too, and I dread coming home each night only to see the cows have pooped another mountain. Please, if you know what can be done about this situation, please let us know as we are at wits end. The stench is becoming unbearable here and I can hardly eat my salad right now as I type this. Pet Ad Translations Date: 2009-05-23, 9:47PM PDT Puppy's = PUPPIES puppie = PUPPY Applys = APPLIES rare = degenerate photo ...

From Gizmodo's deals of the day: • 15.4" Lenovo G530-444635U Dual Core Laptop with 2GB DDR2 160GB HDD for $399.99 plus free shipping (normally $427 - use coupon code PAYPALBTS88 ). • 13.3" Aluminum MacBook MB466LL/A with 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2GB RAM 160GB HD SuperDrive (Refurbished) for $949 plus free shipping (normally $1,049). So a new Lenovo (they bought IBM's Thinkpad line) for $400 or a similar refurb apple for $950... yeah..

This is a real email I just got.. ETD to me show details 1:38 PM (3 minutes ago) Reply Follow up message Ander- As I was trying to say if I were to trade your car in at a dealer if I bought it I would prob. only be offered 5000 > 5600 for it. Which I would need to do if there ended up being any unforeseen problem with the car and I choose not to deal with it... Yeah... I will sell it to you for less than I would get for going to a dealer for trade-in. Makes a whole lot o sense.... idiotic.

NASA is set to install Tranquility - the latest section of the ISS, and with it one of the most important sections of the space station: the cupola. Until now the largest window on the ISS was 20 inches (probably a little larger than the monitor you are looking at now). The cupola will have a 31 inch window with a lot of little windows around it. And to me, it is possibly a sign that NASA is getting the point of the ISS. Space is amazing, it is what humanity has to explore, and it will be the most important and longest-lasting of all our explorations. Getting to space, living in space, and being able to see and enjoy the beauty of our planet from space and of the stars beyond is the real reason behind man's quest for leaving this planet. Now, I am a pragmatist, and so I firmly believe that the only way space will work is if we make money. And there too, the cupola makes sense. If I was a prospective space tourist (ok, well, I am, but I am about $19.99 million too short) the cupola ...

Found by Randy, this one is a classic - and I love that BoA tried to charge overdraft charges... NH man charged 23 quadrillion dollars for smokes July 15, 2009 MANCHESTER, N.H.—A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars. Josh Muszynski (Moo-SIN'-ski) checked his account online a few hours later and saw the 17-digit number -- a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500 (twenty-three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty-four thousand, five hundred dollars). Muszynski says he spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers and the $15 overdraft fee. The bank corrected the error the next day. Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.

This is not a joke. At least I dont think it is. But it should be... 'Asteroids' lands at Universal Lorenzo di Bonaventura producing game adaptation By Borys Kit July 2, 2009, 02:12 AM ET Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game "Asteroids." Matthew Lopez will write the script for the feature adaptation, which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura. In "Asteroids," initially released as an arcade game in 1979, a player controlled a triangular space ship in an asteroid field. The object was to shoot and destroy the hulking masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into both. As opposed to today's games, there is no story line or fancy world-building mythology, so the studio would be creating a plot from scratch. Universal, however, is used to that development process, as it's in the middle of doing just that for several of the Hasbro b...

A little while ago N. Korea launched a cyber-attack against S. Korea and the us. It was a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, and coming from such pathetically backwards nation as N. Korea, which hardly has the internet at all, it was a complete failure. Actually, thats the way it should read. But it doesn't. North Korea was actually startlingly effective, shutting down a large number of S. Korean and US Govt. sites. It was characterized as a mid-level DDoS attack, certainly only a sliver of the kind of power Russia or especially China could marshal up. And it worked, very well. Amazon.com and the NASDAQ servers were strong enough to stand up to the onslaught, but a lot of US Govt. sites were not - and on top of that their security systems failed to block the attack. A DDoS attack is basically taking a bunch of zombie (virus infected) computers, which are under the control of a central authority, and using them to direct a whole ton of traffic to certain servers in order t...

The GOP has not yet reached the stage of figuring out how to return to power. It has not yet reached the stage of assembling a cohesive new platform which rings well with voters. It has not yet reached the stage where it finds ways to effectively assault the popular socialist policies of Obama. It has not yet reached the stage of quietly licking its wounds and planning. It is currently in the process of tearing itself apart. And this might be a good thing. Palin, whatever you think of her, is a polarizing figure. Huckabee is another - but Palin is really the one to look to. Both are likely to run for President in 2012. Neither will win, but one might get the Republican nomination. It is intersting that in the wake of her idiotic decision to retire from the Governorship of Alaska, it is not just the liberal pundits and Democratic attack dogs going after her. It is the Republicans. Seeking to distance themselves from the religious, right-wing, gun-toting, un-intellectual (un-intelligent)...

The new auto czar is Ron Bloom, a former advisor to the United Steel Workers union. Which makes sense, as Obama already abused his power to put the UAW ahead of all other creditors, and bought GM so that the unions dont fail, why not put a union guy in charge of the whole thing. It is only a member of the prolitariat who can truly understand what is best for his comrades.

Her is a great tidbit for all you "big oil killed the electric car" fans (which is probably 0 who read this..) The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund has bought 4% of the electric car company Tesla. Technically, they bought it from Daimler, who had owned 9%. Aabar investments already owned a chunck of Daimler, so this probably gives Daimler some extra (and friendly) financing while still allowing them to go ahead with plans to use Tesla's electric drive and battery pack tech. The kicker is this: "the fund indicated an intention to pursue joint projects in low emissions transportation" The intresting part is of course that the SWF's of the middle east have all been created using oil money, but are all independent (or mostly so) from that oil money. Their goal is to ensure the long term wealth of the region from the money generated now. It is a wild idea to anyone in the US - but the basic strategy is to save up now and invest it so that the weath grows. Of cours...

This is an interesting one - and something I had never read about before. Really, it is the story of a crazy and then obsessive doctor - and of something that should be considered a national treasure? Or a benchmark for future genetic engineering? However you look at it, an interesting story. The Strange Case of Einstein’s Brain Albert Einstein led an interesting life to say the least. In one year alone, in 1905, what scientists have called his ‘Miracle year’ he revolutionized physics and electromagnetism. His equation, E=mc2, is the most well-known equation in the world. Every new pronouncement from Einstein was front page news. He made headlines all his life. But the headlines did not stop with his death in 1955. And his interesting story continued on as well. [ad#posttop] The story of Einstein’s Brain only starts with his death on April 18th, 1955. Up until that point, the story of his brain is inextricably part of the story of Einstein himself. After his death, Einstein’s...

So, my contract is almost up on my cell phone, and my little brother needs to displace me on the family plan. All this means that it is time for norm to get a new phone. The options out there are many. I went into each of the carriers and look primarily at plans. For $60-$70 a month you can get 450 mins, unlimited internet and about 200 texts from each of the major carriers. I think about phone contracts as a cost per year - it is the easiest way to really see the differences and include the phone prices. (Phone price/24 + monthly contract)*12 = yearly cost So next comes the question of phones. There are the halo phones: the Pre, the iPhone, the MyTouch, the Blackberry Storm. There are the messaging phones - pretty much like what I have now (Samsung Alias), but some with features such as full HTML web browsers which set them apart. And in the middle are the legions of pretty-good high-end smartphones like Blackberry curves and pearls, LG Vu's and a host of others. In the end though...

Once upon a time there were cars, which came in s,m,l, and xl, and trucks, which usually came in m,l, and xl. Then, Sir Alec Issigonis invented the front-wheel drive hatchback Mini, and it was good (though that category never really got attention over here). A little later, someone came up with a wagon, and it was good. Then there were SUV's, which also came in s,m,l, and xl, and they were good. Then Chrysler came up with the minivan, and it was also good, if you had lots of kids. Cars were sedans, hatchbacks, wagons, sports cars, or convertibles, SUVs were trucks with shells reattached (or attached, depending on the way you look at it), and Minivans were a highly distinct seperate category. And then the last 10 years happened. And stuff got all screwed up. We are now living in an age when most "SUV's" are based on cars, some cars are getting bigger and taller to be more like SUVs, Mercedes builds a $60,000 minivan, BMW just released a M X6 crossover/wagon/SUV/thingie...

Bruno has just come out, and based on the popularity of Borat, it is doing pretty well. It, of course, largely makes fun of the US, just as Borat did. But juts as in Borat, it also makes fun of Sasha's "home country" - in this case Austria. The difference is this time around, Austria thinks it is pretty funny, with most newspapers giving it decent reviews and public reaction being pretty good. In other words, Austria can take a joke.

This is a true story. Look it up. To me, it is simply one more piece of evidence how Russia is a dictatorship (not that any more was needed), and more than that, interesting for just how crazy it is. Alina Kabaeva was a rhythmic gymnast. If you are like me, and have never really paid attention to gymnastics, you probably dont know who she is. Turns out she is 25, and already retired (more on that later), but in her short career she amassed a vast number of medals including an Olympic gold. She became very popular in Russia, and when she retired in 2005 she went straight into politics and was elected to the lower consultative legislative body (the Public Chamber of Russia). From about that time on she was linked to Putin, as a mistress. Alina had been selected as the 'most beautiful woman in Russia' according to a Maxim like magazine. In 2007, at the age of 23 (if my math is right) she was elected to the Duma, the legislature of Russia. This time the rumors of her and Putin got...

Seems like North Korea is getting ready for another Arirang, which has to qualify as one of the strangest and most interesting spectacles of the modern world. It has a cast of 100,000. It has a giant backdrop of colored cards which are rapidly changed by 30,000 children in order to display patriotic phrases, scenery and portraits. It has thousands of dancers, riots of color, and a stadium of 150,000 in a country which can barely afford to keep the lights on. It is all at once a spectacle of societal control, a throwback to the days of Stalin (though it is unlikely even Stalin could have pulled this off) and the way the hermit kingdom fights back against the 'unfair' descriptions of poverty and despair common in western, and for that matter eastern, news and media. It is also one of the only times that a nation with less than 300 full time foreign residents opens its doors to the outside world, because it is one of the very few ways in which N. Korea is able to get its hands on ...

Basically, as far as I can tell, the point of Google's Chrome OS is that you will be doing everything in the "cloud." Which of course begs the question: what if the weather's bad? Well, it might not be for you then. What I mean by all this babbling is basically that Chrome OS will rely heavily (almost entirely) on web-based application. Gmail for email. Google Docs for word processing. Some souped up version of Picassa for online photo editing and storage. And yes, probably also the long rumored Gstorage for storage in the "cloud." Which again is all good, until the weather is bad (you dont have internet access). In such disastrous times you would still be able to use the offline versions of Google Office and Gmail, but you would otherwise be pretty much screwed. Of course, Google sees the whole point of this as being online, so using it offline is somewhat not the point. In the end, I think it will basically be a small linux distro which will gain traction...

Turns out that a compound found under the statues of Easter Island will lead to a longer life (no, I am not kidding). Rapamycin was first found in the 70's on Easter Island (ok, not just under the statues), and has since been found to be beneficial in all kinds of ways, such as anti-fungal, anti-cancer, and a bunch of other good stuff. The latest findings are that it could make you live 30-40% longer. Or at least, it would if you were a mouse. Using the drug on old mice showed that it greatly increases life expectancy. Of course, it actually lowers your immune system, which is not ideal, but that is what antibiotics are for. Basically it does the same thing that a drastically reduced caloric intake does, without the terrible life you would lead on said drastically reduced caloric intake. Personally, I find this very good news, and hope that it is a step towards what will truly revolutionize human society in the next century: moving beyond the natural constraints of the human body. ...

The coldest object in space.. is a European spacecraft. The Planck spacecraft is designed to study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This was the first radiation/light put out after the big bang (only 380,000 years after or so), and thus is very important in understanding the origin and nature of the universe (little questions like that). The most interesting part of the spacecraft itself is that it sensors work best at minus 459.49 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.05 Celsius, for those Europeans/scientists among us). And if you were thinking that looked a lot like absolute zero, you were right: it is just 0.1 degrees Celsius above that deep freeze. Impressively, passive cooling actually gets the craft down to -230C, just by radiating heat out into the near vacuum of space. After that point, three active coolers bring it down below the magic number of -270C, which is when it is first possible to detect CMB.

From Wired... this is classic: Boston Brings ’70s-Style Crash Avoidance To WWII-Era Trolleys Following a series of high-profile collisions on public transit systems in Boston, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, Boston’s mass-transit system is finally testing a crash avoidance system on some of the world’s oldest continually-operating trolleys. The crash avoidance system uses radio waves to detect upcoming obstacles such as other trains and is hardly high tech. Then again, neither is the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s 1940s-era trolleys on the Mattapan Line that will be used for the tests. “The [anti-crash] technology has been around 30 years,” Stephan MacDougall, president of the union representing trolley drivers, told The Boston Globe . “They’re playing catch-up.” Indeed, even the recent DC Metro crash may have been the result of a failed crash protection system — not a complete lack thereof. The anti-crash sys...

Do not watch this movie. Or, if you do, skip the first 1:30. The last hour is actually pretty decent, as these things go. It is a big transformer battle and basically what I expected from the movie. The first hour and a half however, is another story. It is incoherent. It is disjointed. It is creepy and sexual in strange ways. There are a lot of off-color bad sexual jokes. There are too many fast-talking annoying characters. There are racist characters (and I dont usually believe in that English Major stuff, but in this case, there really are racist characters). There is a segment of "college" that can only have been written by an old pervert trying to make college what he wished it had been. It is bad. And this is coming from someone who loved Transformers, who went into the movie with pretty low expectations for the plot, but high expectations for the action. The latter was met in the last hour of the movie, but the price paid was just too high. I cringed more times in this...

Along with Android - which is primarily designed for phones - Google has announced a new open-source OS called Chome OS. As far as I can tell this is a linux based OS with a new UI which will be targeted at netbooks and possibly cheap desktops. Of course, as there have already been android netbooks, there is some overlap there, but still, I am really looking forward to a Google built and supported OS.

GM's stock is still trading at $0.80 Why? Because the market is irrational - to a degree. I firmly believe that a market is the most rational way to arrive at the greatest common good, and all of that. However, that does not mean I believe it to be perfectly rational. Never have, never will. GM is proof. They have issued--as far as I am aware--two press releases basically stating "dont buy our stock, it's worthless" and yet the price has yet to collapse. At one point after the announcement that common stockholders would get a grand total of $0.00 the stock actually went up to about $1.60. The only thing you should do with your shares at this point is try and request the certs from the DTC and mount them on the wall. However, I dont think the trade in novelty certs is what is keeping GM's share price afloat - stupidity is. I wonder how much, if any, GM stock is available to lend and has thus been shorted the shit out of by hedge funds. I would short it at this poin...

Catching up with news back here, and I found out that the ridiculous loan that Tesla asked for was actually approved by the Obama administration. They gave a $465 million loan to a company that in 5 years has built 500 overpriced laptop powered lotus elises and has gone through 5 CEOs. Someone must have had an in somewhere in the White House, because this is just ridiculous.