Book Of Norm

Government Creates Poverty Freedom leads to prosperity. John Stossel  | April 28, 2011 The U.S. government has "helped" no group more than it has "helped" the American Indians. It stuns me when President Obama appears before Indian groups and says things like, "Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans." Ignored? Are you kidding me? They should be so lucky. The government has made most Indian tribes wards of the state. Government manages their land, provides their health care, and pays for housing and child care. Twenty different departments and agencies have special "native American" programs. The result? Indians have the highest poverty rate, nearly 25 percent, and the lowest life expectancy of any group in America. Sixty-six percent are born to single mothers. Nevertheless, Indian activists want more government "help." It is intuitive to assume that, when people struggle, government "help" is the ...

As a Brit, I have to say, the wedding was pretty damn well done. I have not seen much of it so far, but yeah, I was impressed with what I saw.

This morning, two things happened. 1) The US lost the bid to sell fighters in China in what is likely the largest competitive international arms purchase of the decade. Lockheed Martin and Boeing both were cut from the competition to provide India with fighter aircraft for the next 30 years. This is because the planes that they offered, the F-16 and F/A-18 respectively, are old. They both are upgraded planes dating back to the 70's, and India shot them down with good reason: they are alright today, but they will be out of date in 5-10 years, let alone 30-50 that these planes will be in service. Why is this? The US refused to offer India - an ally and increasingly important economic power and regional military counterpoint to China - the modern F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, let alone the F-22 Raptor. And thus, the US lost out on a $11 billion contract. The result? The US Ambassador to India resigned today and the administration say they are "shocked" at the decision. Am I s...

I'm hoping the Maldives has a good rate of return slated for their latest project. They are planning on building a $500 million dollar floating 18 hole golf course, where the holes are connected by underwater tunnels.. Yeah... two interesting things here. First, because the Maldives is at most about 10ft above sea level, the real purpose of this project is to make money so that the Maldives can buy land in some other country so that the refugees can set up shop in a new home. In that context, considering the Maldives has a grand total of 115sq miles of land, it would seem to me that the $500 million would pretty much cover the land purchase anyway... though granted, I am guessing some development company is putting up most of the cash in this case. Second, goddamn is that thing sweet. Honestly, there need to be a lot more floating/underwater/GI Joe flying submarine projects being built around the world. This was one of my favorite toys. And yes, I want a real one.

In the little time Obama has actually spent being President, he has proved to be an idiot and an ideologue: inflexible in his beliefs, incapable as a leader and infuriatingly stupid. With 2 years of economic malaise, unpopular politics, failed campaign promises and pathetic leadership behind him, Obama is launching his re-election bid. (which means that out of 6 years of public office - he will have spent 4 of them campaigning - good service there Obama). Honestly, in the last 2 years he has gone from messiah to laughing-stock. His ratings have collapsed. His core is pissed at him because it turns out he does not really believe in social freedom (Gitmo, gay rights etc), and he is the same corrupt crony-loving Chicago politician he has always been. The middle is pissed at him because it turns out that he is a wide-eyed socialist who pushed through one of the biggest, and most unpopular pieces of legislation steaming cow turds ever - Obamacare, which, well, stinks like a fish-market...

Sprint is doing everything it can to block the purchase of T-Mobile by AT&T. They have filed briefs, requested confidential AT&T filings, made public statements, and run around shouting "that's not fair." And I don't understand why. They say that it will stifle competition and prevent smaller companies (them) from getting the best phones and technology, as AT&T and T-Mobile combined would have about 129 million subscribers, compared with 94.1 million for Verizon Wireless and 49.9 million at Sprint. Yeah... but not really. I mean, 50 million is still a lot of subscribers, and there are many many good phones out there with many different manufacturers making them. Honestly, with the exceptions of Blackberry and Apple - the difference between top-end Andoid (or Windows) phones these days? Meh. One is pretty damn similar to another. Sprint has never had the iPhone and possibly never will, and Sprint and Blackberry have always been close, as have Sprint and P...

Really, can't make this stuff up. An eastern European manufacturer of armored personal vehicles has come out with the first armored SUV made "for women, by women"... yeah... the press release is.. well... read on. (And by the way - this is real - not a joke) DARTZ PROMBRON'' IRON.DIAMOND or L4P LADIES.ONLY World First SUV - Safety Uberluxury Vehicle created for ladies by ladies. All we see the modern trends - more and more ladies like to drive big cars, and if so - of course they want to drive unique and exclusive. It's very hard to meet two ladies in same dresses on party - but quite easy to meet ten ladies come on this party on similar black SUV's. DARTZ solve this problem. And - as always this decision is bulletproof. And not only because DARTZ cars stop the bullet - but because this idea is as always unbeatable. The first car is ordered by one of famous kazakh oil kings daughters - and here is here what she got. The base of new car ...

Shocking. Turns out that rich people are not just parasites living off the sweat, blood, and tears of the laboring masses, chuckling all the way to their dachas about trickle-down theory. Now, I am for a flat tax which would mean many of the ultra-rich would not be able to take the deductions which they do. At the same time, it is ridiculous to lump any family earning $120,000 a year or $250,000 into some bucket of "the rich" which Democrats rail on against like Lenin having tea with Trotsky.

So, your average, run-of-the-mill HD has a puny 1080 lines of vertical resolution. 5k, the new new thing, has... well, you guessed it, 5,000 lines of resolution. These camera come courtesy of RED, a small camera manufacturer which has been making a big splash as a better and cheaper alternative to traditional movie cameras (they have a lot in common with dSLRs, which have also been cutting into the traditional high-end territory). James Cameron just picked up 50 RED Epic-M's (for a shiny $2.9 million, or as James Cameron understands it, lunch money) to shoot Avatar 2. As you can see, 5k is far higher resolution than "HD" - and clearly, there will be two of them shooting together to give you the real 3D which made Avatar stand out. What does this mean? Expect higher resolution special editions to come out for years (decades?) to come, as your puny TV catches up with Mr. Cameron.

So, the Barnes & Noble Nook Color is now a full Android tablet - something which has been possible through hacking, but the native software was seriously hobbled. So, here is the good news: the nook color is a great little e-reader which also makes a full-function tablet in a pinch. The bad news? It does not have access to the proper android marketplace, instead getting apps from its own little B&N app world. So is it a full Android tablet? Kinda. But it is a good deal at $250? Definitely, though personally I would still go for the Viewsonic gTablet over at woot: http://moofi.woot.com/moofi/deliciouswaffles

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. -- Cicero , 55 BC

Ugh. TV is seems has reached a new low. Well... Bridalpasty may actually be the most degrading thing ever shown on TV, but this is pretty bad also. A new show from the producers of the Jersey Shore is based around repo of cars. Specifically, the repo guy shows up to take your car away. But, you get a second (3rd? 4th? 5th?) chance: if you answer 3 out of 5 questions correctly, you get to keep your car. Yeah, that's pretty messed up.

Officially, the US has a "strong dollar" policy. Which is like saying that officially, Red Sox players are allowed to have no facial hair. What we really have, what is becoming increasingly clear, is a "weak dollar" or more particularly a "what the fuck is the dollar" policy. Let me explain. The current administration, Geithner in particular, has made statements such as "We will never use our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage," - clearly Mr. Geithner, that is not something I am worried about. For a country like the US, a strong currency is a good thing. The US is the reserve currency of choice. Our capital markets are (were?) the gold-standard of the world. Investing in the US, investing in the dollar, investing in US treasuries were all seen as the way to go if you wanted the best, and most reliable. Now, for countries which are developing, are more focused on manufacturing, and are not well known for their financial markets...

Right now, woot.com   has one of the best cameras out there. The Panasonic Lumix offers pretty much everything that you need. I have one as my second camera (after my dSLR), and it takes fantastic pictures, shoots HD movies, has image stabilization, and a 12x optical zoom - which means you never need to worry about being too far away. Sure, it is a little bigger than most other point and shoot cameras, but that's the price of a camera which does everything. Panasonic 12MP Digital Camera with Leica 12x Optical Zoom & HD Video $ 139.99 + $5 shipping CONDITION: Refurbished PRODUCT: 1 Panasonic DMC-ZS6 12MP - Leica lens, 12x Optical Zoom (25-300mm), 3" LCD, HD Video +

There are now two, completely separate, Lotus car companies. Read on for a story of intrigue, murder, moonlight beaches, Nazi overlords, nano-technology time-warps and secret Nordic cults.  Ok, actually, it is just about cars... but it's still a good story: Some of you know and love Lotus. They make fantastic cars. Lightweight cars which handle better than pretty much anything in the world. Cars which prove that 'simplifying and adding lightness' is really the best possible way that you can go with a car. Let's keep it simple. They make these: Mmmm... I want to lick it...  Yeah, they are goddamn pretty.  Now, Lotus back in the day was one of the most storied F1 teams, winning many races, especially with the famous John Player Special liveried cars of the 70's Mmmm... I want to lick it...  Now, back in the day Colin Chapman kept Lotus Group (the car builder) and Team Lotus as two separate but tied-at-the-hip companies... which sets up what happens la...

First, let me get this out there. I love subarus. Specifically, I love the older Legacy sedan (and wagon at times) but most of all, I love the 1st generation WRX. The 2005 WRX is a thing of beauty. And beauty, I mean it in the eye-of-the-beholder-and-it-looks-like-a-bulldog kind of a way. That WRX was fantastic to drive. Honestly, it is one of the best handling cars made in the last decade... which means one of the best handling cars ever. It was light, had great feedback, impressive suspension (not shockingly stiff, but responded quickly while keeping you well planted) and had symmetric AWD. The hatchback WRX could quite literally, be everything short of a full-on truck: sports car, winter transportation, convenient hatchback. The WRX is, of course, based off of the plebeian Impreza. And don't get me wrong, the Impreza has been a great car also. Not the beast that the WRX was, but still a very fun car to drive that was also immensely practical, especially if your state...

The City of Austin is planning on buying 176 Crown Vics at $25,000 each before the model ends its run. Why? Well, because the new crop of cop cars just don't cut it. Yes, this is one of the worst things to see behind you When I started business school my first presentation was on the Crown Vic, and how someone should buy the factories and tooling (there are a lot of factories for sale right now - for every kind of car part and assembly). You see, the needs of fleets, and cops and taxis in particular, are very different from the needs of regular car buyers. To us, a body-on-frame car is a complete anachronism in an age when most "SUVs" are now unibody crossovers with curvy sides, all-season (not all-terrain) tires and 3000lb tow ratings. It is manufactured at the St. Thomas Assembly is an automobile plant in Ontario, Canada. This is a 2,600,000 sq ft (242,000 m2) facility which lose the region 1,400 jobs when it shuts later this year. I know that the world is cha...

Tablets are too expensive right now for what they are. Or most of them are anyway. $500 for a device which does far less than my 1yr old $200 netbook just does not make sense. More than that, they are a secondary, larger, smartphone. If you are getting a tablet,  you probably have a large-screen smartphone (or you might have a blackberry, in which case a tablet does make more sense), and that phone does  pretty much everything that a tablet can do, albeit smaller. But what about $280? That's the price of the Viewsonic G Tablet these days. This thing is as powerful as an iPad 2, with Nvidia Tegra processing (basically, a high powered integrated processor/graphics chip) and with a big and pretty 10.1' screen (and, I will admit, a lot of bevel). The look and feel.  It looks elegant and feels very sturdy, not like a cheap knockoff at all. The back of the case is made of a sturdy plastic the materials overall feel good. On to the most important part: the screen. There i...

Yeah - this is what you look like to Apple. And you thought Google could be creepy... Turns out that iOS devices (iPad, iPhone) document where you are in a secret file, and then send that file to iTunes when you log in. This is a completely undocumented feature. It is always on, and there is no way to turn it off. Is it creepy? Yeah. Really creepy.

Cadillac announced that it would no longer offer a stickshift with the upper level (3.6L) CTS, from 2012 it would only be available with the base--and pretty booring--3.0L unit. This is part of a growing trend to eliminate the third pedal. Which is too bad, because you will end up with lots more Prius drivers who's understanding of car control is on par with a well trained goldfish. This little murder is no mystery. There are some clear culprits, colluding to considerably curtail car's classic controls. 1) The DSG Yeah... the DSG is an impressive little box. The Audi unit which first came out with the TT a while back was a big leap forward over previous automatics. Now, there are a lot of DSGs out there, and a lot of them are very good. Well, let me qualify that. They are very good at shifting: they do it quickly, they do it competently, and they let you hit little buttons and paddles to do the shifting. The issue is this: the DSG lets you control the car in a way si...

So, Apple has decided to sue Samsung, saying that the Galaxy S phone line and the Galaxy Tab tablets rip off the iPhone and iPad. Which is pretty ridiculous - they are black, rectangular, and have rounded edges... which means.. they look like a smartphone/tablet without a keyboard. Woo. They all allege that the user interface rips off iOS, which is claiming (again - there have already been proxy suits with HTC and others) that Android rips of iOS... which it does. But if you want to get right down to it, iOS rips off Windows 3.1, and every other OS. Pages with icons for applications and files... never seen that before. However, here is the interesting back-story: Samsung is Apple's #2 supplier, after Sony. Remember that Apple does not really make anything. They do design, marketing, and sales. Their parts come from Sony and Samsung along with a number of others (like the chip companies) and then are put together by Foxconn. And Apple bought $5.7 billion from Samsung last year....

My ski movie from 2009-2010. Kind of the wrong season right now, but I finally re-edited it so that youTube would accept it.

Yeah, this is a direct quote. One concerned citizen reasonably asked Obama about the high price of gas (now around $4gl in many places) and this was the response of the asshole in chief: I know some of these big guys, they're all still driving their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything. You're one of them? Well, now, here's my point. If you're complaining about the price of gas and you're only getting eight miles a gallon--(laughter)--you may have a big family, but it's probably not that big. How many you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids? (Laughter.) Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then. (Laughter.) . . . So, like I said, if you're getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in. You can get a great deal. I promise you, GM or Ford or Chrysler, they're going to be happy to give you a deal on something that gets you better gas mileage. Quite simply, screw you Obama. You are completely out of t...

Garter is a major consulting and analysis company in the smartphone world, and they often come up with some pretty silly predictions as to market share. That said, it is still interesting to see what they are saying.  Fundamentally, I think they have it wrong. Apple will fall to be about 10% market share, HP webOS will be about 10% market share, and android will be closer to 70%. As for Microsoft - I think they will have most of the remaining 10%.

The Volt is an impressive car. Autoblog just came out with their first full review and it meshes well with everything that I have heard: the most impressive thing about the car is that you barely notice it is an EV. It is a competent, easy to drive, practical hatchback, which just happens to be powered by electricity (and a gasonline generator). But here is my issue. I just bought a new 2010 Saab 9-3, a somewhat outdated but still very nice compact near-luxury car. It drives better and has nicer materials than the Chevy Volt. I paid a little under $19,000 for the base model, 2.0T stickshift - a very good price that comes with buying a 2010 Saab right now. Yes - that is $11k below MSRP, but this argument would hold with a range of compact cars as well, such as a Civic or Mazda 3. The Volt costs ~$44,000 with $7,500 less in govt. rebates gets you to $36,680. This is $17,780 more than I paid for my Saab. The Saab gets 30mpg in the real world. Autoblog got 80mpg in the Volt, an impres...

Another company that I love, SpaceX, said they had something big in store, and they did. The company today revealed its plans for the Falcon Heavy, which promises to be the "world's most powerful rocket." Just how powerful is that? SpaceX says the 22-story rocket will be able to carry satellites or spacecraft weighing over 53 metric tons (or 117,000 pounds) into low earth orbit, which is nearly twice what the Space Shuttle is able to carry. What's more, this isn't just a far off promise. SpaceX says the rocket will be "ready" sometime next year, and the first test flight is planned for 2013. The rocket's sheer size isn't it's only selling point, though -- it also promises to drastically reduce the cost of sending things into space, with each launch expected to cost "only" $100 million. Yeah, basically SpaceX just showed that it is not just planning at taking crumbs left from ULA (Boeing/Lockheed) and other national player's...

Yes - Virgin Oceanic. Not content to conquer air, land and space, and for that matter, the surface of the ocean with Virgin Cruise Lines, Richard Branson is now going after the ocean depths as well. While it looks like a cute little sub designed to show rich passengers a good time at the Great Barrier Reef or during a break from cruising their yacht around the Caribbean, this is actually designed to visit the very depths of the world's oceans. Specifically, his partner in the enterprise will take it to the bottom of the Mariana Trench later this year - becoming the second human-operated vehicle to make that dive, and only the third vehicle in history. After that, Bransonator himself will pilot it to the bottom of the Atlantic - the Puerto Rico Trench. Once all that is worked out, the Necker Nymph (the type of craft - I am sure the ships will be called V.S.S. Nautilus or something like that) will be used to taking paying customers down to the ocean depths. Pretty ...

My Dad just came back from a few weeks over in the mother country (the UK). While he was over there, he rented a VW Passat - the new one. He has owned a 2001 1/2 Passat (the redesign which made the modern chrome trimmed Passat) since new, and loves it. It is the base 1.8T, and I have driven it many miles myself. While sports car it is not, it handles most situations very well, with steady and predictable handling, a peppy engine with good power (with a stickshift) and a simple but refined interior. That Passat enjoyed many years of good sales, establishing the Passat as a real contender in the US market, something the previous generation (*shudder*) did not... yeah.... So then, thinking that what the US wanted from their German cars was sophistication, VW tried to move the Passat (and the whole brand) upmarket. This started with the introduction of AWD (4motion) and then the W8 engine - which was a complete failure. No one wanted a $45,000 AWD W8 Passat when it was not that muc...

So, Dish networks has now bought Blockbuster, which combines the awesome power of satellite TV and VHS rentals. Oooohhhh. So - I think Dish network is pretty good, especially in areas where verizon fios has not yet reached. But you are still left with the problem that Dish can't offer bundled internet service. And I don't think I need to explain the challenges Blockbuster faces. I mean, when was the last time you rented a movie for 5 days for $4.99? Do you remember where your Blockbuster card is? Do you have a Blockbuster card anymore?

Looks like there is going to finally be a all-touchscreen webOS phone. Now, while that is not quite my thing, it is still very interesting, especially if it comes with slightly better specs than the decent but not top of the line Pre 3. Actually, the single biggest thing I hope it comes with is 4G, which for some reason Palm decided was not necessary on the Pre 3...

Never wear flip-flops to the barber on a rainy day.

A dog which spent three weeks floating on a sea of rubble has been picked up by a Japanese rescue helicopter. A dog believed to have survived the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11 and, also three weeks at sea, is rescued by Japan Coast Guard members off Kesennuma, northern Japan April 1, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Japan Coast Guard/Handout TOKYO  |  Tue Apr 5, 2011 6:38am EDT (Reuters) - A dog that survived in a house swept away to sea three weeks ago by the devastating Japan  tsunami was saved on Friday by a coast guard rescue team flying over an island of debris. Local television showed an aerial view of a brown medium-sized dog trotting around the roof of the house -- the only part of it floating above water -- before disappearing inside through a broken section of the roof. The coast guard rescuers, thinking there might also be people alive inside the house, lowered one of their team onto the roof. He tried to coax the dog out, but then went in after tearing a...