Book Of Norm

I thought this was hilarious... From Engadget: Boeing has hauled in around 20,000 pounds of potatoes to use as human substitutes during its tests with airplane WiFi. The aircraft maker is checking that onboard wireless signals don't interfere with navigation and communication systems. Groaningly titled SPUDS (Synthetic Personnel Using Dielectric Substitution), the tubers apparently replicate how airborne signals are bounced and absorbed by real-life passengers, but without the need for Boeing to offer complimentary snacks or tiny drinks during testing.

What you may not yet fully understand is that no one - and I mean no one - has any idea how we are actually going to run ObamaCare. With the entitlement package looming, 26 states have refused to participate and only 6 states have been given "conditional" approval on their design for the exchanges which will be used to offer and buy coverage. The best part? Certain states have taken to filing freedom of information act requests in order to figure out what the fuck is going on... From the WSJ: For sheer political farce, not much can compete with ObamaCare's passage, which included slipping the bill through the Senate before dawn three Christmas eves ago. But the madcap dash to get ready for the entitlement's October 2013 start-up date is a pretty close second. The size and complexity of the Affordable Care Act meant that its implementation was never going to easy. But behind the scenes, even states that support or might support the Affordable Care Act are frus...

Ok... so no one has actually died yet.. but the idiocy which is Apple Maps is *nearly* killing off a large percentage of the Australian population (there aren't that many down there to start with - most Aussies are off getting drunk in youth hostels around Europe from what I can see). Not long after it appeared in the Apple's latest operating system, people noticed that it had a habit of showing destinations in the wrong locations, like a museum located underwater, or refusing to show locations at all, like the town of Stratford-Upon-Avon and most of a few world metropolises. The near death experiences are coming because Apple Maps lists the town of None of that has apparently helped drivers looking for the town of Mildura, in Victoria, Australia however. Apple Maps still places the hamlet in the middle of the Murray-Sunset National Park, about 44 miles southwest of its actual location. The displaced location map issue has reportedly left six drivers lost or stranded in the...

I have a '96 Chevy Tahoe. One of the things I love about my pre-millennium towing and hauling machine is that it is unapologetically a big truck. The design team drew two boxes and more or less called it a day. I love the way it looks. Towing my briefly lived 300zx  After a long period of making pretty rounded out trucks (especially in the early 2000s), Chevy today revealed their new Silverado/Sierra, and it looks.. a lot like mine. Which is to say - I like the design. It's a truck - it should look like a truck. Leave the crossover looks to the crossovers. Also - I like that it doesn't have the ridiculous "look at me" front grill of the Tundra or Ram - the 3rd and 4th best selling full-size trucks in the US always look like they are compensating for something. Can you actually see what's in front of you? Probably not.

You might not have a job right now, but these guys do: These two chuckleheads work for Chrysler - or more accurately for President Obama. Here is the story in a nutshell: "the 13 workers who were fired in 2010 after local news cameras caught them drinking alcohol and smoking what looks to be marijuana in a park during work hours have been reinstated following arbitration." What can Chrysler say or do at this point? Not a whole lot. The UAW is running the show: "Chrysler Group LLC acknowledges the reinstatement of a number of employees from the Jefferson North assembly plant who were discharged from the company in September 2010 after appearing in a local TV station's story about their off-duty conduct." While the company does not agree with the ultimate decision of the arbitrator, we respect the grievance procedure process as outlined in the collective bargaining agreement and our relationship with the UAW. Unfortunately, the company was put in a very d...

If you have not read Atlas Shrugged, go do so. Then come back here. I'll be waiting. Don't worry - the last 1000 pages go pretty fast a little while later... Yes - I know the book is 500 pages too long and I know the characters are... interesting... but, getting beyond that to the point of the book: I wish I had a gulch. Right now I am working my ass off and hiring people. And most of those people suck. People can't show up on time, constantly want to take breaks or just, in classic Atlas Shrugged fashion, want to avoid being responsible for anything. At the same time I live in a country (the USA) where I feel like the government more and more approximates the government in the novel. Everything has to be done "for the good of society" while "profit for profit's sake" is obviously evil and a sign of anti-social behavior. Companies should think first about their employees or the environment, not about making money. I also increasingly f...

I never understood why the hatchback sedan was not more widely adopted. I grew up in Saab 9000's and I have since owned one myself. They make so much more sense than a traditional sedan there is literally no comparison. And there is no downside - you don't have to look like you are driving around in a mom-mobile because it isn't a wagon - it's just a sedan with the hinge at the top of the rear glass. Maybe there is some complex reason why they are more difficult to design - something about cross-member stress and the strength of the c-pillars. Meh. Saab did it for years and they were the size of a flea compared with ToMoCo and GM. Not to rehash old ground here... but the 9000 Aero was a large hatchback sedan which was incredibly fun to drive, got 250+ hp from a turbo 4 and was very safe while getting almost 30mpg - all in the early 90's. Ahead of it's time? You bet. More practical than your car, guaranteed So what has BMW done? After many years of lett...

MIT Technology Review: How Solar-Based Microgrids Could Bring Power to Millions

Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship  Voyager . Its continuing mission: to explore strange new mostly empty areas, to seek out new other empty areas, to boldly go where no one has gone before. Oh yeah, and to bring along some serious bling. It's like a grill for space ships So, turns out that the Voyager is on.. the final frontier. Before reaching "interstellar" space. In other words, it just crossed over into the last zone where our sun is more or less still in charge of everything.  Currently the spacecraft is passing through what scientists are calling a "magnetic highway" - which was, in fact, invented by Al Gore.  I'll give you interstellar wind, Trebek This is really just the pre-party though. The real party comes when Voyager crosses over out of the magnetic control of our sun... which could be anywhere from a few months to a few years away. At that point, Voyager will do a little dance, make a little love,...