Book Of Norm

Hilarious. I just discovered a totally irreverent, satire filled, and damn funny British car blog. Apparently, it is quite well known in the UK, but, well, I'm not in the UK. http://www.sniffpetrol.com Here is a article spoofing the Toyotagate recall: GOD FORCED TO RECALL HUMANS Sniff , Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 2:09 pm Posted in News Mr God, yesterday There was bad news for God this week as the well-known deity was forced to recall thousands of examples of His popular Human Being after reports that the model could be prone to unexpected attacks of unbelievable stupidity. Initial reports of blithering idiocy emerged from the United States last year but these were thought to be isolated incidents caused by people who are so thick that if a floormat was touching their accelerator pedal would prefer to scream ‘Aaaaaaargh’ until they drove into a river rather than simply moving the mat backwards with their foot. However, it now seems the monumental stupidity is more widespread and...

Ok, I loved the movie Avatar. Saw it twice, in IMAX. It is probably my most memorable movie experience of all time (up there with first seeing the Matrix and Jurrasic Park). I also really liked the story. Sure, it had.. similarities.. to Pocahontas. And the evil greedy corporate types were.. evil and greedy. But I dont really care about that when I am watching a movie. Maybe it was because I was an english major (I know... odd when you think about it) but I get tired of analyzing and looking for meaning instead of just reveling in the spectacle and pure enjoyment. However, it seems Mr. Cameron has been having a little too much Pandora Delight. He's started to complain about his tail, tried to bond with his private jet, and made this statement: "Nothing is going to change until we properly price carbon. Right now gas is $3 a gallon at the pump. In my perspective, gas is $15 or $20 a gallon if you fully burden it with the cost of all of these big military actions, the overall co...

Launched less than three months ago to look at the sun, the SDO is already giving some absolutely incredible pictures of the big hot mamma. I am sure that the science is good to. Seriously, you just need to watch this. Incredible.

Right now, it is looking like the Liberal Democrats (typically a small party) might have enough votes to prevent either Conservatives or Labour enough votes to make a majority government (and pick a Prime Minister). This would be the first time this has happened in the more or less two party UK system since 1974. At that time, new elections were called within months (the UK Parliamentary system can have elections whenever necessary, or in fact, whenever the Queen feels like it, as long as it happens at least once every five years (unless this is extended in a time of crises, the one thing the House of Lords still has veto power over). Alternately, if the PM asks, the monarch does not actually have to dissolve parliament). So.... we might be seeing a coalition government. Which is another way of saying a weak government which will not get anything done and is likely to collapse. Which is probably a good thing actually - at least the not getting anything done part. The less the governmen...

Ugh. I hate united, but really like Continental. Continental was the last of the big US airlines that did not hate you for showing up to travel with them. On Delta/US/United I always feel like I should be apologizing for causing inconvenience to employees by actually showing up and getting on the plane. Continental at worst treated you with a benign indifference and at best was actually pretty helpful and positive. But now, they have been bought by United. Which simply furthers my quest to fly, whenever possible, on JetBlue, Southwest, or Virgin.

I think the Daily show is hilarious. I dont always agree with John Stewart, but I think his premise is actually quite similar to mine - cutting through the crap of modern politics, media, and public opinion. As well as just taking about interesting and random crap. He is probably one of the less biased "news" shows out there, though he is comedian. He is obviously intelligent, and once you understand where he is coming from, almost all of his segments are hilarious, and often well done. For example - this is well worth the watch, as is most of his coverage of the Tea Party movement and the media around it (which has generally been ridiculous - focused only on the 'crazies' - he has another segment on that as well). The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Nationwide Tax Protests www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Arizona recently passed a very strict anti-illegal-immigration law which is the toughest ever seen in this country. More or less, it encourages a police state where racial profiling is allowed. Everyone is up in arms, and the Democrats have sacrificed the energy bill they have been working on for the last few months (along with Republican Graham) in order to move immigration to the top of the list. As someone who believes deeply in freedom, it might be expected that I think the law is a travesty. I don't. The issue is this: states need to be able to control immigration in order to maintain their responsibilities to their citizens. You cannot allow free and open immigration, it would be destructive to the developed nations of the world, with the overall outcome being very much negative. The US has long relied on a certain level of illegal immigration to help the economy, provide low paying jobs that keep the US competitive in certain areas and keep prices down, and acts as a subsidy...

An apple employee lost the prototype to the next iPhone. Someone with limited morals found it, offered it to Engadget (they refused) so then sold it to the 2nd largest tech site (now maybe the largest with all this traffic), Gizmodo, for $5,000. Apple then got really pissed, and got the police on the case, to the point of breaking down the door to a Giz editor's house and confiscating his computers etc. Funny that I just wrote a long piece about how trying to use a stick to bludgeon the internet into submission is pretty much an idiotic thing to try and do. Well, Apple, which has a history of treating everyone, especially customers, like shit and yet being loved for it, just got turned on by Jon Stewart. Which is not a good thing for a company which relies on basically his audience to sell its overpriced wares. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Appholes www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Liberals and libertarians and even crazy conservatives (the don't touch me kind) all rallied against the Patriot Act. Because it was a piece of legislation that gave the Federal Govt. unprecedented powers to peer into your life, and maintain a police state. And yet - do you know what ObamaCare is based on? It is based on the premise that the Federal government has the right to regulate actions you don't take. Because actions you don't take can fall under the commerce clause. Most people seem ok with the idea that this allows the government to regulate your decision to not buy health insurance. As this is what the bill does. It makes sure everyone is covered by regulating that they have to buy health insurance. What if I told you that if you applied the same principle to other areas, the government could regulate your decision to not buy a car? Not buy a house? Not buy a car from GM? Not buy a house with a loan from Fannie Mae? Or you are simply not purchasing enough, and in...

HP agreed to buy Palm for $1.2 billion. Which is friggin awesome. I have made no bones about the fact that I love webOS and my Palm Pre. As in I think that it is by far the best mobile OS currently in existence (and I have the support of a lot of the tech news world on that one - though the Pre hardware gets knocks vs some of the competition). And now - Palm will have the money, support, and scale to build lots of fantastic phones with great hardware across a range of devices, all running webOS. HP has said that it will "double down" on webOS, and also that they like its ability to "scale." Which basically means we will be seeing a webOS tablet PC, which is fantastic. HP is of course the world's largest computer maker, and one that I quite like. I have three HP computers, and all of them have treated me well. HP has moved away from the PDA/smartphone market, but obviously now recognizes that you can no longer be a major 'computer' maker and not make smar...

This is just seriously creepy and screwed up. And I have no idea how this can be cost effective. No to mention, and this is a massive pet peeve of mine, the fact that these tickets basically have to be issued just for speeding, while speeding DOES NOT EQUAL driving unsafely. I had a 75yr old woman driving in front of me today, wobbling over two lanes and then randomly slowing down and speeding up until putting her right blinker on and turning right four roads later. This is unsafe driving (people over the age of 70 are 4 times more likely to be at fault in accidents which lead to death), but no cop will ever, ever, pull her over. But if I was doing 78 in a 65 on a clear day on an empty road in a good car with good brakes and good tires, I could get a ticket, and have gotten tickets. WTF. Anyway, here is the article. http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/22/satellites-to-issue-speeding-tickets-from-space/?hpt=T2 April 22, 2010 Satellites to issue speeding tickets from space Posted: 03:1...

Frankie sent me this one, and I find it interesting. It is a company which promises to help brands deal with the risks, dangers, copyright abuses, and attacks of web 2.0 - bloggers, facebook groups, twitter, etc etc. http://www.brandprotect.com/ I do find it kind of amusing, since I just read Boomsday by Christopher Buckley, which was a fantastic book (and the sequel to Thank You for Smoking") and in it one of the products that makes billions for a soulless character is one that hides webpages you dont like from Google and other search engines. I dont disagree with the notion of these companies, but I worry about consequences and tactics. Though it is increasingly the case - as with online shopping ten years ago - that we are seeing the emergence of a few giants of the online world who really have most of the volume, too often this will still be a mismatch which is easy to abuse. Send in one scary letter form letter from the legal department - and a post/article/comment disappears...

This is just plain weird, and creepy .. and encourages (in my opinion) some sort of glory to dying in crime.. David Morales Colón is a Puerto Rican man who passed away in a gun -related incident last week. And, instead of a traditional casket , is being displayed atop a motorcycle at his wake. Vroom vroom -- I'm comin' God! Yesterday and today, callers who stopped to pay their final respects to the late Mr. Colón got a bit of a surprise. Instead of the traditional presentation of the body in a casket, Mr. Colón's corpse, dressed in casual duds and sunglasses, was instead posed in a very lifelike position atop his Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4. According to Puerto Rico's Primera Hora newspaper, the motorcycle was given to the victim by his uncle, and upon Mr. Colón's untimely demise, family members delivered the bike to the funeral home specifically for this unusual wake.

Hilarious. This is the kind of bullshit you get when a government is running a company with a political aim (look - nationalizing industry and giving control to the unions does work!). Turns out that the $4.7 billion that Government Motors paid back a week ago was actually from an escrow account using... government loans as a source of funding. The govt. is coming out and saying that the govt. did nothing wrong by paying the govt. back with money from the govt. but it is pretty damn clear that the whole thing stinks like Al Gore's feet. The money specifically came from TARP funds. Which means that GM really has paid back nothing. This administration is honestly the sleazyest most double-dealing and morally corrupt administration that I have ever seen. At least with Billy Bob Clinton you knew you were dealing with an operator, somehow the Obama administration simultaneously claims to be clean while continuously abusing their rights, powers, the constitution, the beliefs and decisio...

Cape Wind just got approval from federal regulators, as it is a pet project of the democrats and a leading contender for shoving green energy up America's ass. Cape Wind has been fought over for the last 9 years, and this is not just conservatives vs eco-hippies. In this case, there are environmental groups on both sides, because Cape Wind will provide clean energy - but it will also provide a deathtrap for local bird populations as well has have a pretty significant impact on the local ecology. And this is where Cape Wind starts to get stupid. It is a land grant giveaway in order to produce enough energy to power 75% of the needs of... Nantucket, Cape Cod, and Martha's Vineyard. In other words, almost nothing. But it is projected to cost $1 billion dollars (for a controversial first-of-kind clean build. In Massachusetts.Which means it will cost $2-5 billion or so.) One of my main points on this blog is that most people think too small. This is a perfect example. It is a matter...

No, I did not just finish reading On the Beach, watching Mad Max or playing Fallout 3 (though I enjoy all of the above). Specifically, this came about because of Eyjafjallajokull (which is, incidentally, my middle name). I started to think about volcanoes - big ones. Ones that make Eyjafjallajokull look like a pimple on the face of a 13yr old girl. Volcanoes like the Lake Toba eruption which likely lead to the emergence of modern man. And then I though - gee - what else could do this... and here we are. Most of these will not end life on earth. Life on earth is a hell of a lot hardier than the dominant species. So even if mankind goes the way of the Whatthefuckasaurus, life will probably stick around. Turns out that crows are nearly as intelligent as humans (more on that later) - so I am betting on them to take over after we are gone. -They decided to adopt some of our human sports The chances of each of these happening is very very small. But together, the chance of human civilization...

PowerPoint is a great tool. When used in moderation. Interesting article today in the NYT about how there is a backlash against the overuse of powerpoint within the military. Though the slide that brought this about is a spaghetti bowl organizational chart, the real issue is bullets. Which brings me to this fantastic quote: “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” - General McMaster Hell of a quote, and a hell of a name. I can see how the rigid regularity of ppt goes oh so well with the military, to the point that it stifles original thinking and problem solving. I think we need to move past PowerPoint v1.0 (honestly - have they really changed much in years?) and move on towards using it as an informative tool. Slides should have far fewer bullet points, and instead be focused on informative graphics and media which cannot be relayed through words. Great article though - well worth the read: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html

Crazyness is going on in the Gulf. There was the blowout on the BP operated Transocean rig, which I am sure you all know about. But here are some of the kind of crazy parts you may not know about: 1) The blowout happened after they lined the bore hole with cement. Which basically never happens and should pretty much be impossible 2) They thought that the well was not leaking - then they found that it is. To the rate of 42,000gl a day (amazingly - according to Wolfram|Alpha, that is only 20% of the rate at which the SR-71 Blackbird consumes fuel while flying at Mach 3 - that is a crazy plane.) 3) The spill is heading for the wetlands of Louisiana, which account for about 40% of US wetlands The New York Times Twitter Sign in to Recommend 4) The wellhead is 5,000 feet down. Which is really, really far down. There is a safety valve (blowout preventer) at the wellhead - which is not working 5) The plan to deal with the spill, currently, is to set it on fi...

This little thing is friggin awesome. One of the best uses of RC robotics since Robot Wars went off the air (why the hell did that go off the air anyway?)

Own a Toyota Prius? Do you plan on owning it for the next twenty years? Because that is how long it will take for your purchase to make sense. Actually - that is assuming it holds its MPG rating and reliability for 20 years, which I am highly skeptical of (it being impossible without changing the battery at a minimum.) A new report comes from the SF Chronicle about popular hybrids and their costs, and the time it takes to get save the money you paid upfront to buy a hybrid instead of an un-besmirched ICE counterpart. Nissan Altima Hybrid - 21 years Toyota POS Prius - 20 years Honda Civic Hybrid - 17 years Honda Insight - 16.5 years Toyota Camry Hybrid - 15 years Mercury Milan Hybrid - 13 years Fod Fusion Hybrid - 5.6 years http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/22/investopedia43617.DTL This is probably also a good time to mention that the Ford Fusion is also good looking and keeps wining comparison tests, gets similar MPGs to a Prius but is much larger and a much bet...

Iceland a year and a half ago went into meltdown because its highly leverage banks quickly lost capital and had to deleverage. The result was disaster, and as the tiny (population wise) nation's economy was based largely around banking (and fishing and tourism - but had been mostly banking at that point), the result was a destruction of the country's economy. This is a graph of the OMX15 - the biggest 15 Icelandic companies (sort of a DOW and S&P500 rolled into one). The destruction was... err... total. Sovereign debt was severely downgraded Agency 29 Sept. 10 Oct. Fitch A+ BBB– Moody's Aa1 A1 R&I AA BBB– S&P A– BBB Many of the banks that defaulted did so mostly with foreign deposits - a lot of deposits specifically from Holland and especially the UK, where online Icelandic banking had become very popular. Noises were made about not paying back the money, such as this statement from a Central Bank Governor "we [the Icelandic State] do ...

No - these are not pictures from Indiana Jones. They are webs created by social spiders. That's right, spiders that like to live together, often by the thousands. Spiders are rarely known to work together, but there are a few species (about 20 out of 38,000) which just love their brothers and sisters. Its kind of like Thanksgiving, but the food flies or walks in. As you can see, these guys like to go big - the webs above were from Texas, where the main prey was, thankfully, mosquitoes. Others, such as the ones below, live in South America and catch prey individually and bring it back to the nest. Pretty wild behavior from a small bunch of arachnids.

I like real cheese. Crumbly cheese. Cheese where breaking off a piece is a geologic process. Where a new chunk of cheese calves away from the mass like an iceberg crumbling away from the antarctic shelf.

For some reason I have latched on to Citi as the main financial company that I follow. It has also been one of my worst investments, and now one of my best investments. As its shares tanked, I kept buying. The sad thing is, I started far too early, but then it bottomed out, I kept buying, and then I started putting money into calls. And they have done spectacularly well. A few days ago during the big rally, I sold my positions, and waited for a pullback. It came with the Goldman getting attacked by the SEC announcement, and I bought the largest option position I have ever held. Which basically makes me pretty damn nervous, but today, with Citi's announcement of actually making a profit, most of those nerves are gone. Which brings me to the interesting part of the story. Citi is the last single company that I hold. I bought companies that I thought were wildly undervalued, and a few days ago in that big rally, I sold out of almost every position I had in individual companies, becau...

NYC has a policy of putting teachers who suck at teaching, never show up to teach, are accused of sexual misconduct, or use drugs/abuse alcohol in "rubber rooms." These are places where the teachers go and sit under supervision every day, and get full pay. Full freaking pay. To do nothing. Because they should be fired, but they can’t be because the teacher's unions make it practically impossible to fire a teacher. As in it costs millions of dollars in legal fees to just fire a teacher in NYC, and indeed in many parts around the country. I have taken flack among my friends (predominantly young and hard-working) about giving teachers a hard time, but teachers, like most unionized protected jobs, often completely abuse the system. It is common that teachers in the NYC system spend between 2-3 years in the rubber rooms, and not infrequently 5-10 years sitting on full pay. This is because it takes so long to fire anyone, and is so damn near impossible, that it takes years and ...

If this works well - I am going to make it more of a regular feature. I read a lot of news (hence where a lot of the BoN comes from). At the same time, a lot of the news pisses me off, because it gets things wrong. Norm does not like. So, here we go: 1) The Aptera is not a car. They are getting a lot of press recently because they went under the radar for most of the last year. They are now back, and a lot of the press loves to talk about Aptera, I have seen it popping up all over the place. The thing is - this is not a car. It is actually classified as a motorcycle. Because it has three wheels, Aptera is gaming the system and claiming it needs to meet only motorcycle safety standards. Which, as far as I can tell, pretty much only means it does not come packed with explosives, and it has headlights. 2) The X-37B Spaceplane The headline: "Move over NASA. The U.S. Air Force has spent decades on the concept: an unmanned space plane that can be used to spy, reposition satellites, poss...

Volcanic ash rises from Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland. Photograph: Reuters Planes across Europe remain grounded due to Eyjafjallajokul's eruption. As the BoN reported a few weeks ago, Eyjafjallajokull was erupting. What sites other than the BoN continue to fail to talk about is that Eyjafjallajokull (I love that name, I think my first born son will be called Eyjafjallajokull) serves as the blasting cap for the much bigger and scarier, and easier to pronounce, Katla. Other fun facts: The last time Eyjafjallajökull erupted, it lasted 2 years stretching from 1821-1823 (err... have summer flights to the UK? might want to check into those..) The 1821 eruption spread fluoride across iceland, damaging livestock and human well-being Eyjafjallajokull is pronounced [ˈɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl̥] , and can be translated as "island-mountains glacier" Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull Volcano, Iceland Posted March 27, 2010

Got this one last night, classic: First Name: sri dewi Last Name: maharani Email: smaharani@gmail.com Telephone: 6221 98568759 Comments: I have client want to buy oil refinery with capacity 100 000bbld, do you have ? please advice . urgent Hmmmm... yeah, I have one right over here... because, you know, I a few oil refineries sitting around to go with my collection of closed GM factories..

Today, I sold my shares in Ford. I had bet on Ford a couple years ago when it looked like everything was doom and gloom for the US auto industry - though not yet the point of apocalypse we later reached. Today, as the shares rallied, I sold my position. But I maintain a strong belief that Ford is a good company, with good management, and strong products with an effective narrowly-targeted focus on a few great vehicles, similar to Honda and Toyota. On the same day comes further news from the travesty that is Government Motors (GM). This woman has been announced as new boardmember: Cynthia A. Telles. GM officially added an extra seat to its board, just to add her on. Because... she has deep industry experience and a long history of reviving troubled manufacturing firms is a lackey of the Obama administration. Cynthia spent 13 years as a Los Angeles commissioner, which according to Obama makes you much more eligible to run a company than say... someone with experience running a company. ...

The pope has been rightly taking a lot of flak recently for the fact that his role for many years at the Vatican was to handle pedophile scandals and cases. Which he mostly did by threatening excommunication to anyone who... reported a case of pedophilia. Oh, and he also covered up many cases, put child molester priests back to work etc etc. It is the worst of the Catholic church, which in my opinion embodies the worst of Christianity. In a move to try and show that the fault does not lie with the church, the Pope's top aide made this inspired statement: "Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia," the Italian cardinal said. "But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true. That is the problem." It turns out, shockingly, that the statistics were supplied by the Vatican's own prosecutor for pedophilia...

Norm has a brilliant new idea for guaranteed %100 return on your money - with no risk! Err... kinda... login | view cart | checkout items in your bag: 100 subtotal: $4,500.00 Home > Premium Products > 5lb Bag of Shredded U.S. Currency 5lb Bag of Shredded U.S. Currency View Larger Image Price: $45.00 ...

After truly failing with the Pre (despite the fact that they have the best phone OS right now), Palm is up for sale. It is sad to see that they did such a crappy job marketing the first real competitor to the iPhone that they are now looking to be bought out. The tech reviewers generally loved it, especially the software, but the marketing and the decision to launch with only Sprint for 6mo were truly idiotic. I agree with Engadget and Gizmodo that the best buyer is HTC. They make many of the world's best smartphones, and have shown a lot of skill re-skinning shitty OS's from other companies (namely Symbian and Windows Mobile), but they dont have their own OS. WebOS is generally regarded as the best OS out there right now (iPhone OS 4 and Andriod 2.1 and Windows Phone 7 all explicitly copy from webOS, and attempt to make their platforms more "webOS like"), and mating that with the beautiful hardware which HTC puts together would create company largely unrivaled - esp...