Book Of Norm

The mother country is having a rough time recently. However, there at least have been a couple of interesting finds from the incessant rain and storms. The 850,000 year old footprints were pretty amazing, being the oldest human record outside of Africa. Now however, the Welsh Dragon has something to be proud of. An ancient forest, part of a mystical lost world (sorta) has been uncovered. The best part? They built a walkway 4,000 year's ago to deal with the rising sea level. That really captured my imagination for some reason. http://tpt.to/a4jcTbl

The mother country is mostly underwater at this point. The storms and flooding continue and my aunt is still getting to the supermarket in a boat. Some relief is coming, at least in terms of assessing and allocating resources, thanks to the unbeaten RAF. http://jalopnik.com/how-the-brtish-air-force-is-using-jets-to-help-with-fl-1529820173?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+jalopnik/full+(Jalopnik)

What happens when you have an entrenched competitor with ties to local government and powerful lobbying groups? They use their leverage to make sure that newer better competition can't access the market. The issue here is of course not capitalism, but the mishmash of a free market and government control and regulation which also caused the housing crises (thank you, Democrats - protectors of the people's right to buy a house with terrible credit and no income). And now - from the WSJ: Why Super-Fast Internet Is Coming Super Slowly The FCC could change this overnight by focusing on what's best for the economy, not just for those it regulates. Email   Print   Save ↓ More   94  Comments   Facebook   Twitter   Google+   LinkedIn smaller   Larger By   ANDY KESSLER Feb. 23, 2014 7:11 p.m. ET In 1982, rock star Pete Townsend asked Americans to call their cable operators and, "Demand...

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The bridge between fossil fuels and fusion power should be and should always have been fission power. Wind and solar are idiotic distractions which have significant environmental impacts of their own and power generation costs which are far from competitive (5x higher on average, in an industry where 10% efficiency gains would otherwise be a huge deal). The US government has thankfully approved loans to get a couple new reactors off the ground. Might be the only intelligent loan this administration has ever approved. US to back nuclear power with $6.5 billion in loan guarantees http://cir.ca/s/qNx

Know the old saying "don't shoot the messenger?" It's where the poor guy in funny looking tights and a hat which your daughter would be embarrassed to wear to a tea party with Mr. Teddy has to go up to the king with a roll of parchment. If it's good news, tights and hat guy lives, bad news? He dies, unless he can deliver the bad news in a funny way.. (Tight Tights) So what about this here Canadien pipeline? (You have to say that with a French accent, the word "pipeline" has at least nine syllables). The reality is simple: the oil is going to be produced. What we are arguing over is how it's going to be delivered, and where it will be delivered. Activists and most of the executive branch are against the pipeline. Instead, they prefer we us rail cars and boats to China (the other option, and less environmentally friendly in and of itself). This means more of this heavy crude refined in emissions unregulated China, and much higher overall well-to-wh...

Widely available on eBay and Amazon for about $80, these little wood stoves are an intriguing purchase. For the good of all, I bought one. It takes about 5 minutes to set up. The paint burns badly the first couple times, so set it up outside. But after that? Flaming perfection. Fiery fantastic. Combustion champion. Inferno interesting. Conflagration commencing. It's damn good. No, it's not as good as a real wood stove. But you can put it in your fireplace and have a wood stove in 10 minutes for $80. This successfully transforms your fireplace from a gathering point for dust and dead spiders to something you might actually use. If you have a house, buy one. If you don't have a house, buy one and go live in Nebraska. Life's better in Nebraska.

A Spanish warship entered the waters of Gibraltar, using a fake call sign and signals. It was a love calculated to threaten the British and bring into doubt their sovereignty over the island. Sadly for the Spanish, no one board realized they were 301 years too late.

This blog is no friend to the UAW. Never has been. Likely never will be. The reality is that while the management of the American car companies has made mistakes, the UAW has been so consistently inept as to be a joke. After successfully killing off two of the three host bodies the union was sucking the life out of, their big new target were the successful foreign owned factories in the South. Enraged by the concept of employees getting paid $27/hr + benefits and infuriated by the idea that employees could be fired or promoted based on their ability (what kind of screwed up world are we living in anyway?) the UAW went on the attack. They got the German labor union (which would obviously rather see more VW's built in Germany that the US) to strong-arm the VW management into supporting something which was clearly bad for the company. They got all kinds of special benefits and put a huge amount of money in the vote. Any they lost. HAHA Fuck You. Seriously. No really. G...

This is pretty funny.. the Wisconsin quote is by far the best part.. With icy roads across US, methods besides salt being used U.S. -  JANUARY 7, 2014 4:27PM From cheese brine to molasses, transportation officials across the country have utilized available additives to help melt icy roads this winter. FOLLOW STORYLINE SHARE COPYRIGHT 2014 REUTERS 1 With the typical salt used to de-ice roadways ineffective below 16 degrees Fahrenheit, transportation officials have adopted additives that can keep salt working at temperatures as low as -25 degrees Fahrenheit while weighing the financial cost and environmental impact of those additives. RELATED STORYLINE ON CIRCA US Midwest stuck in 'polar vortex' 2 "It's all about availability… States are using whatever they can find that works, especially in low temperatures." TONY DORSEY, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF STATE HIGHWAY AND TRANSPORTATION OFFICIALS SPOKESMAN New York and Pennsylva...

Pretty interesting article.. basically looks like it could consistently get funky here in the winters, all thanks to the warming going on in the true north. As the Northerners say... winter is coming.. But really, because of global warming in this case.. CHICAGO—The US is freezing.The UK is flooding. Alaska and Scandinavia are unusually warm. And, most remarkably, all of that has been going on for roughly the entire winter. It's not just unusual weather; it's consistently unusual. A few years back, researchers suggested that strange weather in the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere might be a consequence of changes taking place in the Arctic. Now, with a few years of additional data, some researchers are arguing that we have detected clear signs that Arctic warming is driving our weird weather. We sat down with Rutgers University's Jennifer Francis at the American Association for the Advancement of Science to find out what's new. Why the polar vortex is y...

This is sad, serious, and very bad news. Turns out that in their search for easy profits, organized crime gangs are increasingly turning to poaching and smuggling exotic animals. The risks are low, the profits are high, and the penalties are minuscule. This article mainly caught my attention: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26153516 With a couple of very critical pieces of information: Yeah - that's not good But also this - which is just ridiculous: "Thousands of rhinos, elephants, tigers and others have been slaughtered, becoming part of an illegal market that's worth an estimated $19bn a year. Many criminals see it as low risk, high profit, says Mr Stewart. "There is a lower risk of apprehension, it's unfortunate but law enforcement has not invested the resources in attacking wildlife crime as it has in other crimes," he explains. "Even in courts the penalties are much lower. Just last year in Ireland, we saw tw...

Honestly, this seems pretty unconstitutional to me - though the Supreme Court has upheld it. States are running out of lethal injection drugs because the major drug companies refuse to produce and sell them. So they are turning to unregulated "compounding pharmacies" and passing laws to hide the entire process from the public. If you have to pass laws to hide what you are doing... Should we really be doing this anyway? The reality is simple that the death penalty is generally speaking outdated. Though there are people in the world who deserve it (or much, much worse) - it's use in our judicial system is really a difficult issue. The majority of those put to death are in the South, and a lot of those can be argued to have some kind of racial bias built in. So what are states doing? Some regulators have brought up the concept of using the firing squad - which as Utah will tell you is a terrible idea. And no - we don't need it. We have thousands of murders a yea...