Book Of Norm

There is something I just don't get with bluetooth speakerphones - why would you need one? I mean, the first cellphone I ever had (about 2003) did not have bluetooth or a speakerphone. Every phone since then, including a Motorola which refused to charge without sacrificing three lambs at a full moon on a tuesday, had both bluetooth and a speakerphone... which makes me wonder: why would  you use bluetooth to connect to a speakerphone, when your phone already has one?  

So... you got a bunch of old chargers lying around the house. You got that little fold out Motorola one from the RAZR which was so damn sweet back in 2005, you have some car chargers you paid $29.99 for at the AT&T store, and you have a bunch of random mini-b usb cables lying around because just about everything for the last 10 years used one. But now, you have a new smartphone. Which means two things: it takes a micro usb cable, not mini, and the battery life sucks (or, if you have an iPhone, it takes a ginormous ancient iPod adapter, and the battery life sucks). The thing is, its pretty easy to use all of those old mini cables/chargers/car adapters for your new smartphone. Just buy a bunch of these: Add to Watch list Zoom Enlarge They are literally $1 on eBay with free shipping (just click on the picture). You plug it on to the end of your current setup - and presto changeo you have about 1,000 more charging options...  Life advice, brought you by Norm ...

One of my favorite humor sites, cracked.com (the only downside of this site is that it is owned by Demand Media), has a funny little piece about big pharma. Honestly, it always gets me so pissed off when I have to listen to idiots drone on about how drugs are cheaper in Canada and some personal story where Obama rides in on a stallion and saves the planet from economic growth big pharma... morons.. Anyway - pretty solid, and funny, overview: #2. Pharmaceutical Companies As Seen In:   Resident Evil, The Constant Gardener, The Fugitive, Leverage, House What Hollywood Thinks They Do: If a movie or TV show features a drug company, you can bet your medicinal marijuana that it's doing one of four things: performing illegal experiments on people, charging an arm and a leg for treatments, lying about a drug's effectiveness or straight murdering anyone who stands in its way. "And so, by murdering all of our customers with poison, Big Pharma can increase market penetration...

I am pretty damn tired of hearing about anti-oxidants, and how they are good for just about everything. AS I suspected, there is very little evidence of this... and some evidence to the contrary. The main evidence seems to be that people who eat natural foods which homo sapiens evolved to live off of, get health benefits. Put this genius finding into the same category as sitting all day is bad for you, you walk better barefoot, and butter is better than margarine. Disease prevention Structure of the  polyphenol antioxidant resveratrol . People who eat fruits and vegetables have a lower risk of  heart disease  and some neurological diseases, [ 146 ]  and there is evidence that some types of vegetables, and fruits in general, protect against some cancers. [ 147 ]  Since fruits and vegetables happen to be good sources of antioxidants, this suggested that antioxidants might prevent some types of diseases. This idea has been tested in  clinical trials  ...

Finally Blogger has fold over, or "jump" or whatever the hell you want to call it. They are only like 10 years behind on that one. So now, I can put just some of the post up here.

I really like Hyundai (though they dont make a single car I want to own) and I dont like Mercedes Benz (though they do), but the funny thing is... well... just look. These was done by accident, putting them next to each other on Autoblog as lead stories... I think the Koreans may have found a little inspiration somewhere...

Working on getting an android app up and running - thanks to a cool website my brother found. Speaking of which, his writing is over at http://www.thefourpartland.com/

Automakers are always looking for "white space" - if you drew an evolutionary map of cars, it would be the gaps between the cars currently on sale today. Chrysler hit it (relatively) big with the first minivan, while recently the big gap between cars/wagons and SUVs (and avoiding the blob from mars styling of minivans) has been filled up with innumerable crossovers, much to the delight of car manufacturers and self-image worrying soccer-moms everywhere. On a side note - lets be honest here - a AWD minivan is probably a better option than almost any crossover... but lets move one. One of the first true crossovers, and one of the most popular initially, was the Nissan Murano. For reasons I don't quite understand, but perhaps because the styling has not really kept pace, the Murano is not nearly so popular as it once was. However, Nissan has a plan, a radical plan, which will keep the Murano selling well and chip away at one of the few (4dr coupes? check. Sports SUVs? check....

Ok, I find it kind of hilarious that I just watched an ad for T-Mobile which spends the whole time (with their new magenta-wearing Anne Hathaway lookalike spokesperson), making fun of AT&T.... which just bought T-Mobile... classic. Keep running those ads, T-Mobile, keep running them...

This is just hilarious..

So - in my last post I made a comment about Alexander VI. Here is a little more on one of the holiest of holies. Pope Alexander VI (1431 – 1503) The reward for “Baddest Pope Ever” arguably goes to Rodrigo Borgia, who enjoyed the benefits of having an uncle who just happened to be Pope Calixtus III. Thanks to his convenient social status, Borgia passed through the ranks of bishop, cardinal, and vice-chancellor, gaining enormous wealth along the way. In 1492, he was actually able to buy his way into the papacy, defeating two other opponents by means of bribery. Alexander was so corrupt that his surname eventually became a byword representing the hellishly low papal standards of the time. He sired at least seven different illegitimate children by his mistresses, and didn’t hesitate to reward them with handsome endowments at the church’s expense. When low on finances, he either established new cardinals in return for payments, or he slammed wealthy people with completely fabricated charges...

I used to run an eBay store. My friends in college would joke about coming into my room and seeing brown boxes stacked high along the walls. I bought and sold electronics, and made pretty good money at it. And through that, I found out all about eBay, and all about its problems. You see, they want to make you think that all you pay for in an auction is the listing fee. The listing fee is meaningless unless you are selling something very very cheap. What really screws you is the final value fee. Here's how it works: eBay never talks about the final value fee. They hide a little notice at the bottom of the page you use to create your listing which says "final value fee will apply" or something like that. You list your item, thinking that eBay makes its money on the $0.10 you paid for your listing, the $0.35 for the gallery fee, and the $0.50 for a subtitle. They make you give them a credit card so that you can pay this fee. This is all bullshit. What really happens is that ...

These, according to your GPS units, are the worst (common - yes, your Uncle Bob might drive 2hrs each way to work, but hes just freaking crazy) commutes in the country. Basically, California sucks. 1. Riverside Freeway/Calif. Highway 91 eastbound, Los Angeles 2. Lunalilo Freeway/I-1 eastbound, Honolulu 3. California Delta Highway/Calif. Highway 4 westbound, San Francisco 4. I-95 southbound, Washington, D.C. 5. Bruckner/Cross Bronx Expressways (I-95 southbound), New York 6. I-35 southbound, Austin-Round Rock 7. Connecticut Turnpike (I-95 northbound), Bridgeport8. I-405 southbound, Seattle 9. Bayshore Freeway (U.S. 101 southbound), San Jose, Calif. 10. Kennedy/Dan Ryan Expressways (I-90/I-94 eastbound), Chicago 11. I-5 northbound, Portland, Ore. 12. Calif. Highway 78 eastbound, San Diego 13. I-494 eastbound, Minneapolis 14. Southwest/Eastex Freeways (U.S. 59 northbound), Houston 15. Southeast Expressway (I-93 northbound), Boston 16. Hampton Roads Beltway (I-64 westbound), Virginia Beach...