Book Of Norm

So a little while ago (ok, over a year ago?) I did a post about 10 great performance bargains . This time, its the cars that should never have been built. Unlike most car-guy lists on the subject, I am going to try and focus on cars that have been built in recent memory and will ignore the oldies such as the Edsel and Mustang II. So here you go, the norman pantheon of crappy (not craptastic) vehicular transport. 10) suzuki x-90 The designer still has not figured out what he was trying to make. Long before the word "crossover" ever reached the American lexicon, and in fact long before the SUV buying spree hit its peak, Suzuki was already getting ready for the time when people would want a tall seating position but the features of a car. The problem is, it took the worst of everything. It had 95hp lawnmower engine. It had a T-top (the Firebird called, it wants its roof back). It had a high seating position, rolled a lot, and then had a normal car trunk instead of a full SUV hat...

Russia is seeking to buy a Mistral class amphibious assault ship from France. This is a huge admission of inability on the part of Russia. Assault ships are small aircraft carriers which are used for marines and helicopters, and in a pinch can use Harriers and other VTOL aircraft. The Mistral is about 20,000 tons - which makes it a medium weight assault ship. The us versions are about 40,000 tons, which put them in the same class as most other country's full aircraft carriers. The fact that Russia, which has been struggling to even convert a Kiev class crusier to an aircraft carrier for India, is now shopping abroad is a sign of just how far their shipyards and domestic military industry has fallen. The Russian Navy was never the strongest of its forces, but buying from France? That is falling a long long way. On another note, France continues its longstanding trend of supplying military hardware to every undesirable corner of the globe. Damn French.

And its not Craigslist's fault. Its the fault of all of the scammers out there, most of whom are not US based, and the chance at $100 or $10,000 US hard currency is too good to pass up. It seems the current scam actually involves Paypal, not Western Union for a change, not sure what the angle is, Paypal is usually pretty secure (a good sign though is the fact that no one, ever, in the history of Craigslist that I have experience, has asked to use paypal other than scammers). Things I love about these: 1) They all have their full and very generic names as their gmail account name. "John Smith" is my personal favorite 2) They barely speak English 3) They want to "buy" the item without even having seen it 4) They want everything ASAP - nothing on Craigslist is ASAP - its As Soon As You Show Up With Cash in Your Hand Randy recently told me of one which used the address and pictures of a place which was actually up for rent, none of these are that good, but still amu...

One of the central planks of my platform when I run for ruler of the world will be this: A new "lane" for certain drivers. Previously known as "the shoulder" all drivers of: Buicks Priuses Corrollas Insights Oldsmobiles (how ever many are left) Rounded (pre STS/CTS) Cadillacs Volvos Any American car from the 1980's and Subaru Wagons will be required to drive in this "lane" under penalty of having their driver's licenses revoked and their cars sold for scrap. A panel (me) would be set up to arbitrarily decide which demographic of cars was currently pissing me off and would be added to the list.

Electric cars are coming. Range extended hybrids will be the first, and then popular, name brand full on electric cars. But there are some issues. For plug-ins, how do you calculate MPG? For the Volt, GM claimed it would get 230mpg city, then the EPA said no, but plugged the government built car as the savior of all things holy. The problem is how far you drive it. Drive under 40 miles, and you are all electric. Drive to Grandma's house in Duluth and you are going to be burning a fair bit of gas - the Volt will probably get 40mpg or so. The media has focused on how you measure such things, and the answer is - its tricky. But I have another, and realistically bigger problem. I dont have a garage. Actually, not only do I not have a garage, most of the people who live in cities and a great number of people who commute into cities do not have garages. They live in apartments, they live in townhouses, they live in 2 family homes, and even those who at one point had a garage they could c...

Quick update of main issues, from the Cato Institute: Wonder What ObamaCare Would Be Like? Look at Massachusetts In today’s Detroit News , Cato director of health policy studies Michael F. Cannon explains that we can see what ObamaCare would look like by examining post-reform Massachusetts. It's not a pretty picture. More Massachusetts residents think the reform has failed than think it's succeeded — and with good reason. "Premiums are growing 21 to 46 percent faster than the national average," Cannon writes, and "Statistics on waiting times for specialist care in Massachusetts read like a dispatch from Canada." Sorry, Mr. President, the Legislation Disagrees with You "If you like your health insurance, you can keep it," is a frequent presidential refrain. Unfortunately for President Obama, the House bill contains several provisions that disagree. In an Orange County Register op-ed , Cato senior fellow Michael D. Tanner shows how the legi...

Interesting ghost sighting, mostly because I like him as an actor, and think that most people (myself included) would not be able to come up with any reason he would have to make something like this up. The play is very highly received, he is a world-class actor, and he does whatever shows he wants at this point: its not about publicity. From the Telegraph: telegraph.co.uk - He saw the apparition while performing Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian McKellen. Stage hands believe he saw the ghost of John Baldwin Buckstone, who was actor-manager of the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the mid 19th century and a friend of Charles Dickens. Upon coming offstage for the interval, Stewart told his co-star that he saw a man standing in the wings wearing what looked like a beige coat and twill trousers. Sir Ian asked him: "What happened, what threw you?" "I just saw a ghost. On stage, during Act One," Stewart replied. The episode was related in a documen...

Even though they had done basically nothing with it for 15 years other than try and sell rebadged Subarus and rebadged Chevy Trailblazers, GM did not want to let go of Saab when they had to. Why? Because they put a lot of time and effort into this, the next gen 9-5 (which should still be called the 9000 - has BMW ever changed the name of the 5 series? No.) Other good news? Every engine will have a turbo, all the way up to a 300hp v6 turbo with advanced AWD.

The nice thing about classics is that they are great books, and they are cheap. Because they are off copyright, anyone can make a version of them, and while some editing and typefacing, formatting, printing and binding went into the cheap Barnes & Noble editions, absolutely nothing (other than a scanner) goes into the Google version. Which is why they are free. Not only are they free to read online, they are free to download in PDF format. Which is actually very nice, for those of us (Norm included), who consistently use and rely on portable electronics (in my case, a Nokia 770 and Palm Pre - a giant crack though my laptop screen greatly reduces my love of reading on it...). It also makes me wonder what the cost would be just to print off the whole book? If only I was still a student at Colby (printing was free)... it would have made all those English Lit classes significantly cheaper (though significantly more annoying - carrying around a backpack full of 8x10 novels? not fun). An...

About a month ago I posted about how dangerous cows were to humans. Now, a UK farm group has come out with a stiff warning. "LONDON (Reuters) - The deaths of no fewer than four people after being trampled by cows in the past two months has prompted Britain's main farming union to issue a warning about the dangers of provoking the normally docile animals. Cows can become aggressive and charge, especially when calves are present and walkers are accompanied by dogs, said the National Farmers Union (NFU)." The thing is, I actually have some experience with this. I have been hiking in the UK my whole life, and part of that is going through farm fields (a lot of public paths do so in the UK). There are a lot of cows in these fields. What I have learned is this. 1) if there is a bull be careful, don't look at it, don't make noises at it, and walk with a quick pace 2) if there is no bull, you can take your time, take some pretty pictures etc 3) do not moo at the co...

The Pirate Bay was shut down by a take down notice from the Swedish Govt. While there are mirrors of the site up and running (and on the run), the original is gone. Very sad. Another major torrent site, Mininova, just got notice that the Danes dont like file sharing either, and were told to take down every copyright-infringing torrent, or pay $1,000 for each one... which pretty much means its gone. RIP Torrents, long live whatever comes next.

the best thing about the Boston Globe? Actually its the only part I look at at all: The Big Picture. A pretty much incredible photo blog. One of the recent ones is all shots of aircraft, and it is spectacular. The formatting does not work for me to do my usual copy and past - the pics are too big. Head over here to see it. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/in_flight.html

Pretty impressive... not much more info available, but crazy nonetheless nikolai sutyagin's home in arkhangelsk, a city in russia's far north-west, started life as a two-storey building, however this is no longer the case. for the past 15 years sutyagin has dedicated much of his spare time transforming the house into what is considered the tallest wooden building in the world, or at least russia. at present the building has 13 floors and stands at 144ft / 43m high.

Got quoted in the NYT today. Not the best quote, but so it goes. http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/08/24/24greenwire-house-climate-bill-would-boost-reliance-on-imp-11316.html

Because if you did, chances are you bought a Mac. A new study shows that 91% of computer buyers who spent over $1,000 were getting a Mac. Average selling price of your shiny white box: $1400. Average selling price of your matte black box: $700. So yeah, on average Mac buyers pay twice as much to get a computer. Which, well, strikes me as really dumb. I mean, what are you doing on your computer that you need to spend so much? Because if it is a Mac, you are not gaming on it. In fact, in a recent ranking (told to me by my brother James) Mac came out as the #3 gaming operating system, beaten by Linux with WINE windows emulation. Yeah. And don't try and tell me you use your Macbook Pro for photo editing. a) getting rid of red eye and cutting out the dumpster on the left of the photo does not count, and b) you dont need anything faster than a 1999 Gateway for photoshop. If you said "I run Final Cut all the time" then fine, anything less and you dont need a Mac. And anyway, if...

A slew of new technologies are coming out to make driving safer. This is my take on them. Radar which stops you from rear ending the car in front in traffic: This is fantastic. Its debut was with Volvo, fitting, so that all the soccer Mom's and dim witted drivers dont ram me in the ass when I am parked somewhere under Boston. I am a big fan of this one, though if you are one of the drivers who thinks it might be worthwhile to shell out an extra $1,000 for this, you probably should not be driving. Cameras which tell you I am in your blind spot: I could count the times that someone almost swerves, actually you cant call it swerving, lazily drifts into me on an almost daily basis. Route 2 in the morning, check. Route 2 at night, check. On any long drive (especially through CT), this is guaranteed to happen at least once. I am looking forward to this one. Rearview Cameras: Unless you work at a preschool, this should not be a safety consideration. Nonetheless, I will include it here. If...

Found this pretty incredible story/photos around on the interwebs: It's a beautiful seaplane abandoned between the sea and the desert of Saudi Arabia and it's been left there for almost 50 years. The plane is a PBY-5A Catalina, a military American seaplane from the 1930's. It's is located on a beach off the Strait of Tiran on the Saudi Arabia side of the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba. Thanks to Adam, we get to know about it and it's story (You too can propose a story to us ) : "The aircraft is a PBY-5A model and was bought from the US Navy by Thomas W Kendall, a retired businessman who converted it to a luxury flying yacht. The PBY-5A Catalina was one of the most widely used multi-role aircraft of World War II . In the spring of 1960 Mr Kendall took a pleasure trip around the world with his wife and children together with his secretary and her son. A photographer joined the group to cover part of the trip for life magazine . On the 22nd March 1960 they la...

I am currently writing this on my laptop, which is connected to the Sprint network with my Pre running as a wireless modem. Really wireless, because the laptop is connected via wifi to the Pre. Yeah, its nerdy, but I love it. Wifi wherever I go.

Good article here.. I will paraphrase. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574360541357223298.html ObamaCare's Contradictions The President does both sides now on his health insurance plan. Over the past week, President Obama has held three town-halls to make the case for his health-care plan. While he didn't say much that he hasn't said a thousand times before, his remarks did offer another explanation for the public's skepticism of ObamaCare. Namely, the President contradicts himself every other breath. Consider: He likes to start off explaining our catastrophe of a health system. "What is truly scary—what is truly risky—is if we do nothing," he said in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We can't "keep the system the way it is right now," he continued, while his critics are "people who want to keep things the way they are." However, his supporters also want to keep things the way they are. "I keep on ...

Ranimal found this one... classic... Naked passenger arrested on flight from Oakland August 20, 2009 2:50 PM OAKLAND (AP) — Authorities say a St. Louis-bound Southwest Airlines flight was forced to return to Oakland International Airport after a male passenger stripped, hit another passenger and fought with crew members. Alameda County sheriff's deputies say flight 947 returned Thursday morning after 21-year-old Darius Chappille of Oakland allegedly exposed himself to the female passenger sitting next to him and punched her in the face. Lt. Howard Jacobs says flight attendants and other passengers then subdued Chappille, as he disrobed. He was apparently completely naked when sheriff's deputies arrested him. Chappille and the woman were taken to the hospital for minor injuries. A Southwest Airlines representative says the flight took off from Oakland again around 10:16 a.m.

"The giveaways and preferences in the bill will actually spur a new generation of nuclear and coal-fired power plants to the detriment of real energy solutions." How the hell does Greenpeace seriously put coal and nuclear in the same boat? Nuclear provides 70% of our CO2 free energy, and that is without building a plant in 30 years. Yet Greenpeace seems to think that it and coal are just the same thing. What the hell do you want Greenpeace? You don't even know anymore do you? You wanted to saved the whales, they are basically saved (the Japanese never got the memo it seems). You wanted to save the ozone, is seems to be doing pretty well. Now, you want "real energy solutions" but you dont want the one energy solution which can actually provide real energy. Your policies are based on idiocy, emotion, and anti-homo sapienism, they are not even based on actual environmental benefit anymore. Go away. Go back to your yurts, tents, caves and recycled post-consumer card...

I have only driven through Kansas once. I probably only stopped for Subway and a bathroom. If I remember correctly, there were so many bugs hitting the windshield of the Expy it sounded like I was in the middle of a downpour. But now, there is a reason to love Kansas. They enacted a law making it illegal to drive in the left lane unless you are passing! This is fantastic. While I don't want to see this abused when there is no one on the road but you... most of the time, everyone needs to GET THE HELL OUT OF THE LEFT LANE AND LET ME BY. This really, honestly, drives me crazy. All the time. Every time I see it, which is every single damn time that I drive. And what do I do? Tailgate, honk, undertake, highbeam, use the slow lane as a passing lane (or my personal favorite, passing 100 gapers at once using the truck hill climb lane), everything which is not the way that the roads are meant to operate. And it is entirely the fault of the damn gaper who thinks its ok to do 70 in a 65 in t...

Just did the math (working on an analysis of Waxman Markey). With credits from the Northeast cap and trade program I could offset my entire annual carbon footprint for about $20. For over a year in 2007-2008 you could have bought 1 ton of European CO2 for under $1. It just seems pathetically meaningless.. But think about this: in the EIA high-case scenario for the Waxman Markey bill, my annual CO2 footprint (9 tons) would cost $1,674 in 2030.

A new company has come up with a way to bypass the inherent difficulty of algal biofuels: getting the biofuel out of the algae. But first, some background: Algal biofuels have a lot of potential. Basically, it has a very high yield per acre, it consumes rather than produces CO2 (I have researched it for EnSys because of this), and in the long term could be a great solution to the "energy crises" - if anyone can get it to work. Tests have been going on since the mid 50's, and so far, no gas. It is, however, impressive technology. Set up a tank, tanks, or pond. Feed it light and CO2 (one free, the other you will be paid to take). After a while, take the algae and break them down to get the oil they have produced out (this part is especially tricky). The problem is that it never works out. Invasive algae take over from the stuff you want. The little guys die out from not enough this or too much that. And, in the end, it is damn hard to get any fuel actually out of the persis...

There is a ghost city that never was in the desert of California. Pretty incredible story this (text from jalopnik and wikipedia): California City had its origins in 1958 when real estate developer and sociology professor Nat Mendelsohn purchased 80,000 acres (320 km2) of Mojave Desert land with the aim of master-planning California's next great city. He designed his model city, which he hoped would one day rival Los Angeles in size, around a Central Park with a 26 acre artificial lake. Growth did not happen anywhere close to what he expected. To this day a vast grid of crumbling paved roads, scarring vast stretches of the Mojave desert, intended to lay out residential blocks, extends well beyond the developed area of the city. A single look at satellite photos shows the extent of the scarred desert and how it stakes its claim to being California's 3rd largest geographic city, 34th largest in the US. California City was incorporated in 1965. California City came about as part l...

So my current email system is pissing me off slightly, because I hate (really hate) local email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird (why should I have to store emails on one computer in one place, or face a 100mb inbox limit? Is this 1997?), but I am also pissed off about the fact that Outlook registers emails sent from atallett @ ensysenergy dot com through Gmail, as "from atallett @ gmail dot com, on behalf of atallett @ ensysenergy dot com, all the extra spaces etc so I dont get spam), so I have heard yahoo does not have this issue. Ok, I gave it a try. First up, yahoo is now calling their email ymail. Hilarious. The bad part is that 5 years after gmail came out, ymail is not even close to being as easy to use as gmail... from 5 years ago. Fail. And then there was this: one of the most annoying things I have ever come across in my life. I am sorry Yahoo, but if this is what you serve up, you deserve the long slow death you are dying.. Every time you want to send an email - th...

“You need a general,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the health subcommittee of the Finance Committee. Of the job vacancy, Mr. Rockefeller said: “It’s a big problem. I can’t explain it.” The Obama administration has yet to fill the role of CEO (though they don't call it that - the government avoids the term) for "Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services" - the organization which oversees the government healthcare plans. It is quite a surprising oversight by the administration, seeing as they have put healthcare reform at the top of the priority list. Of course, part of it could be that Obama had earmarked the spot of Health and Human Service Secretary for the ultimate scumbag of Washington: Tom Daschle. Tom had worked hard for Obama through the campaign, and the position had been publically promised to him (in Washington terms) since Obama won the primary. Of course, he could not take the job, because it turns out he took ...

At least, according to a British newspaper poll it is. Stig got 25% of the vote, Loch Ness Nessie got 16% and the JFK assassination got 12%. Seems about right.

Basically, a new study found that 91.3% of all tweets on Twitter had no value. Roughly 40% were just junk ("My left big toenail is cute"), and about 40% were conversations - IM's. All in all, they found that only 8.7% were actually "of value." This comes on the heels of another study which showed that only 6% of Twitter users are actually genuinely active. All hail Twitter, King of hype. Not sure how Twitter managed to explode and become the cool new thing the way it did, but with much more content (photos, etc) I think Facebook has a lot more staying power.

This is taken from http://rootbridges.blogspot.com/ - and it is pretty amazing. The living bridges of Cherrapunji, India are made from the roots of the Ficus elastica tree. This tree produces a series of secondary roots from higher up its trunk and can comfortably perch atop huge boulders along the riverbanks, or even in the middle of the rivers themselves. Cherrapunji is credited with being the wettest place on earth, and The War-Khasis, a tribe in Meghalaya, long ago noticed this tree and saw in its powerful roots an opportunity to easily cross the area's many rivers. Now, whenever and wherever the need arises, they simply grow their bridges. In order to make a rubber tree's roots grow in the right direction - say, over a river - the Khasis use betel nut trunks, sliced down the middle and hollowed out, to create root-guidance systems. The thin, tender roots of the rubber tree, prevented from fanning out by the betel nut trunks, grow straight out. When they reach t...

Ok, I made up the second part of that headline, but the whole time that Airbus was having problems getting their A380 off the ground Boeing was trying to pull Airbus customers over to the new and amazing Dreamliner 787. Well, it would be amazing, if it ever flies. Turns out that while electrical wiring was the problem for Airbus' big baby, it is the carbon fiber (this time around) in Boeing's fuel sipping sparrow which is causing the problems. Some wrinkling of the carbon fiber and you end up with a whole lot less structural integrity. The two planes dont compete with each other at all - one is XXL and for emerging markets more or less, the other is L and for established markets - basically. But they are both next generation halo aircraft for their companies, and it turns out both have been incredibly difficult to get off the ground. Airbus suffered through three years of delays, multiple CEO's, customers backing out of contracts and other such difficulties. Looks like we m...

So the new idea to cover the 50 million Americans who do not have coverage is to offer some form of non-for-profit insurance co-op. It seems that the American people were not all for "real change" when that change would have reduced quality of coverage for most of us and added trillions to our debt. Instead, the govt. might be moving towards offering non-for profit insurance co-ops. This would ensure that there is "competition" in the system, because we all know when a bunch of private companies are selling the same product in the same market there is no competition... “That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition.” -Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services On a final note, the BCBS associations across America must be asking themselves if the govt. has ceased to remember they exist. After all, ...

From an article on Nancy Pelosi and Senate travel costs: "It's long been apparent that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has a "plane thing." After the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, Ms. Pelosi had a little dust-up with the Bush Administration over her request to use the military version of a Boeing 757 for official travel. Earlier this year, the speaker had another hissy fit because her new, preferred mode of transportation (a Gulfstream G5) wasn't available . Judicial Watch obtained copies of memos from senior Congressional staffers, demanding answers from the Air Force (which handles most VIP airflift missions for DoD), and suggesting there might be hell to pay because a requested aircraft type was already booked. "It is my understanding there are no G5s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable...The speaker will want to know where the planes are..." wrote Kay King, Director of the House Office...

A little picture heavy recently, I know, but I thought this was hilarious:

This has been a long and dragged out battle. Though Porsche made some impressive numbers in a couple of moves with VW stock, it also spent a ton of money trying to buy up a lot of stock when it was very highly valued. In a great reversal of fortune Porsche almost collapsed under the weight of debt from trying to buy VW - and VW was in great shape through the last couple years partly because the incredibly high price of its stock due to the Porsche purchases and takeover bid. Now the VW board has approved the purchase of Porsche in order to save their upper crust older brother. Oh the irony. To be perfectly honest, it wont mean anything to the rest of us. VW/Audi/Porsche already operated like siblings and have been long tied together. There is a lot of crossover and sharing between models, a trend that is likely to continue. It is possible that there will be more sharing between Porsche and Lamborghini though - traditionally Lambo has shared a lot of parts/engines/everything with Audi. ...

This chart is a few weeks out of date, but still interesting. Basically, the highest Obama approval ratings are in areas where he essentially extend Bush policies - namely Iraq (where he has followed the Bush timeline and kept the same leadership), and Afghanistan (where he implemented a "surge"). On the domestic issues, his approval is rapidly dropping. I am interested to see how this one plays out. I would be very happy to see him loose support, as it would prevent the sweeping anti-capitalist changes he seeks to bring to this country, and somewhat impeded the Democratic control of the executive and the legislature.

Seems that the poorly designed, unsupported, and expensive health care bill is taking its toll on Obama and his approval ratings. Overall job approval ratings dropped below 50% for the first time, hitting 47%. It seems to me that reality may finally be catching up to the golden child.