Book Of Norm

HP Touchpad 3rd Chance

2012-01-27T08:34:00.000-05:00

woot.com right now has the HP touchpad up for sale. My brother was persistent enough to pick up a couple of them when the insanity sale has been going on, so I have been using one for the last couple months.

And I love it.

With a couple of very easy tweaks, the software is smooth and responsive, the controls are intuitive, and as always, webOS delivers the best multitasking experience this side of a PC... actually, it might be better than a PC come to think of it.

The main downside, as it always has been with webOS, is the apps. There are not that many available. But what I have found is that there is one good app available for each big thing you want to do. Kindle for books, a couple good news readers, an eBay app, a video player, pandora radio, a few good games, email, and the best facebook and twitter apps for any tablet. What isn't there are the thousands of extra, random or specialized apps, and the general quality of the apps is lower than on the major OS's. All that said, I love the tablet, and for this price, it blows the small and clunky Amazon Fire or big and overpriced iPad out of the water.

HP TouchPad 9.7” 16GB Wi-Fi Tablet

$169.99

+ $5.00 shipping

“It may be unorthodox, but using this tablet is vital to my client’s case, Your Honor.”

discuss this deal (72 comments)

HP TouchPad 9.7” 32GB Wi-Fi Tablet

$219.99

+ $5 shipping

CONDITION:: Refurbished
PRODUCT:: 1 HP TouchPad 32GB Wi-Fi Tablet, 9.7” Capacitive LCD, webOS 3.0, Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11n, 1.3MP Cam

NFNN (Nuggets from Norm's Noggin)

2012-01-26T15:17:00.000-05:00

All businesses create social value, and monetize part of that social value. If they did not create social value, they would not exist.

The New Aston Mar... Err... Ford Fusion

2012-01-26T11:03:00.000-05:00

Take a look at the new Ford Fusion and tell me what you see...

Because I see the front end of a Aston Martin tacked onto the nose of this latest Ford. And that isn't a bad thing, actually, I think this car looks great, and far better than the budget looking Fusion it replaces.

But Ford... really... you kinda pulled a Hyundai with this one.. goddamn do they look similar

Switch Productions 2010-2011 Webisode

2012-01-26T00:07:00.001-05:00

British woman first to ski across Antarctica

2012-01-23T13:04:00.001-05:00

This Just In

Save the BoN (and lots of other stuff)

2012-01-23T07:54:00.001-05:00

Protesting SOPA: how to make your voice heard - http://pulse.me/s/57fs7

Saab may be Turkish

2012-01-23T07:48:00.001-05:00

Report: Turkish private equity firm jumps into Saab buying fray - http://pulse.me/s/5fh0U

2012-01-12T09:33:00.001-05:00

This Newly Discovered Frog Is the World's Smallest Vertebrate - http://pulse.me/s/4TR7Y

Saab no More?

2011-12-20T00:41:00.000-05:00

Today, Saab filed for bankruptcy in Sweden.

Some blame GM for blocking Saab's purchase by two random Chinese car companies. I don't.

I blame GM for running Saab into the ground over the decade and a half they owned the company, taking a unique brand with a strong following and completely failing to understand anything about the brand, what made it great, why people bought them, or where the company could be taken.

Sadly, just as GM was finally turning the company around (the 9-5 is a great car, the 9-4X a very good crossover), the recession hit, and GM was forced to rationalize brands. I don't blame them for selling Saab at that point. Spyker begged them to sell rather than close Saab, and it turned out Spyker simply did not have the resources to run Saab, let alone rebuild it. Then, when Spyker looked to sell the company to China, they would essentially be selling GM technology to companies which will just take it to compete with GM. There is no reason GM should have approved the sale.

But what is sad is that a unique and impressive brand, a brand which for a time offered a very strong contender to the German brands in performance while still incorporating safety and usefulness, is going to go to waste.

Kim Jong Il Dies

2011-12-18T22:48:00.001-05:00

N Korean leader Kim Jong-il dies - http://pulse.me/s/48Oig

Though we think he is just a wacko wearing tall shoes, the people of North Korea looked up to KJI as their demi God leader, partly because they were forced to, partly because they had no access to anything which challenged that reality.

Now, that leader is dead, and while the divine right succession worked in 1994, it is not totally clear that this time around, passing power down to his third oldest son, that the people will so willingly transfer their love, affection, and fear.

I certainly hope they don't, but given just how little access the people of North Korea have to reality or any form of power, I am not sure this opportunity will be acted upon.

Nuggets from Norm's Noggin

2011-12-12T19:08:00.001-05:00

The world ain't just what it used to be.

Can a pure handling car survive? The 2013 Subaru BRZ

2011-12-08T11:52:00.003-05:00

Autoblog just reviewed the 2013 Subaru BRZ and the result is... this is one of the best handling cars on the market, bar none. Subie used the Porsche Cayman for comparison (and perhaps a little reverse engineering also), and it seems like they have built a mini cayman.

But the issue is this: the car only has 200hp and 150lbs of torque. Now, it only weighs 2,700lbs... but still, that's not a lot of power.

And here is really the question: can a car with amazing handling but down on power make a dent on the market? My answer is no.

Exhibit one: The Mazda RX-8. Every reviewer loved it when it came out about 8 years ago. It was one of the best handling cars on the market, but like the BRZ was down on power, especially torque. Torque tends to matter more in day to day driving and passing situations (unless you are revving the engine like mad - which most people don't). The RX-8 has never sold well, and is now getting old, with Mazda making no plans to build a replacement model.

And while the BRZ is a good looking car...

It is not that good looking. I mean, I much prefer the previous generation WRX, or the 370z, or.. especially.. the 300hp Mustang v6.

And that is my basic problem. No one is sure yet what the car will cost.. but autoblog has heard every number from $22,000 to "somewhere around the WRX," which is $25,595, to $28,000. Of the broad competitive set Subaru listed, a 210-hp Genesis 2.0T Coupe starts at $22,250, a 300-hp V6 Mustang is $23,105, the Mazda Miata is $23,190 and the RX-8 is $26,795.

So, I love Subaru's, but I am not sure this really represents value (at least to me) vs. a 265hp $26,000 WRX.

No one ever called it pretty...

Our New Home...

2011-12-08T11:52:00.001-05:00

One of the great things about technology, and space exploration in particular is that it gives us the potential of finding a new home. Now i am not one top believe that we are going to make this one inhospitable any time soon... but there is that whole eggs in one basket thing.
For the first time we have found a planet which we would probably be able to call home (without all that fancy terraforming).
The only downside? It ain't close. But so what, who's up for some multi- generational spaceflight?
Kepler confirms first planet found in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star! -

http://pulse.me/s/3LJQw

Global Income and Population Density

2011-12-08T11:37:00.001-05:00

I think this map is incredibly interesting, not just for what is there, but for what isn't: the vast swaths of the earth which are essentially uninhabited.

Ahh, that New Car Dead Body Odor

2011-12-08T10:37:00.001-05:00

This is why you use carfax...
\

By Jeremy KorzeniewskiRSS feed
Posted Dec 7th 2011 6:00PM

Most funky odors are pretty easily traced back to their origins... the french fries that spilled out of the bag and have found permanent residence under the driver's seat, or the forgotten grocery bag in the trunk from last week. Other, more serious smells, require the assistance of a biohazard company.

Such is the case with a 2006 Ford Expedition purchased by a Michigan woman named Margarita Salais, who purchased the vehicle from Suburban Ford of Sterling Heights. It seems that the dealership acquired the SUV in December of 2010, a cold month in Michigan. Salais purchased the car in March, near the end of the much-too-long winter season.

The cold temperatures apparently masked the smell of rotting flesh. Salais took the car back to the dealership and was told the smell must be coming from a dead animal. Unhappy with that report, Salais called her insurance company, which contracted Elite Trauma Clean-Up in Clinton Township to investigate.

This is where things get a little murky. According to State Farm, the insurance provider, the smell was determined to be of human origin... dead body, anyone? The Detroit News, however, dug deeper and spoke to the Elite Trauma employee who inspected the vehicle, who said that the smell could be traced back only to "rotten meat" of unknown origin.

In any case, Salais still has her rotten-smelling Expedition, which she later found had been used as a rental car and had been reported stolen three times. At the very least, Salais' lawyer believes the dealership should take the car back and pay his client for damages - an amount that would likely vary depending on the real cause of the dead-body odor.
News Source: The Detroit News

A delicious two year old sandwich: the future MRE

2011-12-07T22:17:00.001-05:00

The Army's Latest Innnovation: A Sandwich That Stays Fresh for Two Years. This thing is pretty damn cool. Basically they have figured out how to keep water and oxygen away from the sandwich, and so without crazy preservatives they are able to make a sandwich which stays fresh for two years - http://pulse.me/s/3PgnO

Not the People's Car

2011-12-07T15:34:00.001-05:00

VW has just released the new Beetle... and it looks a lot better, and is a lot better than the old one.

It's basically the 911's chubby little brother

The thing is... it's not very hard to be better than the outgoing Beetle. That car was first put on sale in 1997, which meant it was competing with cars like this:

The Paseo.. So under... whelming

So, what is the new one like? More or less, pretty good. Check out a good review here.

But here is the issue. The car costs upwards of $25,000. If you include the DSG gearbox, the sunroof, and a premium package, you are going to be spending about $28,500 - which means over $30,000 once all the taxes and fees are included.

That's a lot of money for a somewhat sporty car with a 2.0-liter gasoline engine with 200 horsepower and 207 pound-feet of torque. Actually, that's not just a lot of money, that is a huge pile of money. The Beetle turbo should be competing with factory turner Mazda 3's, hot Ford Focuses, and the rest in the tuner compact market. At $28,500, the Beetle is playing with the WRX, Mustang, Genesis Coupe, and Camaro. And lets be honest, in that bracket, its chubby ass gets spanked all over the road..

Tarranau

2011-12-07T15:12:00.001-05:00

My brother wrote and has published his first book, a classic beginning to a fantasy epic, and I think it would make a good present for Christmas.

http://www.amazon.com/Tarranau-Book-Four-Part-Land/dp/0982989407/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323288692&sr=8-1-spell

Take a look, read some reviews, and check out the website http://www.thefourpartland.com/

Oldest Living Animal

2011-12-07T15:08:00.001-05:00

This is pretty incredible. They found a picture of this guy from over 100 years ago... and he was already 70 years old.

He was born before the Civil War, before railways took over, before modern machining. And he has lived to see a man on the moon, the rise of modern computers, and the mobile tech-enabled world of today. More specifically, he has eaten a lot of grass.

World's oldest living animal discovered after he is pictured in 1900 photograph

As a photograph it looks fairly unremarkable - a tortoise nibbles at the grass in front of a Boer War prisoner and guard.

By Richard Savill and Richard Alleyne
Last Updated: 11:16PM GMT 03 Dec 2008

1 of 2 Images

This rare picture of a Boer war prisoner snapped on the remote island of St Helena, has shed light on one of the planets oldest living inhabitants Photo: BNPS.CO.UK

Jonathan, the tortoise, still alive todayPhoto: BNPS.CO.UK

But the pictures helps to mark the reptile as the oldest animal on the planet.
Jonathan, the tortoise, is believed to be 176-years-old and was about 70 at the time the black and white picture was taken.
He was photographed during the Boer War around 1900, and his life has spanned eight British monarchs from George IV to Elizabeth II, and 50 prime ministers.
It was taken on the South Atlantic island of St Helena, where Jonathan still lives today, along with five other tortoises David, Speedy, Emma, Fredricka and Myrtle, in a plantation.
The previous oldest tortoise was widely thought to be Harriet, a giant Galapagos Land tortoise, who died in 2005 aged 175 in Australia.
Despite his old age, locals say he still has the energy to regularly mate with the three younger females.
A spokesman for the island's tourist board said Jonathan is owned by the St Helena government and lives in the specially built plantation on the governor's land.
He said: "Jonathan is the sole survivor of three tortoises that arrived on St Helena Island in 1882.
"He was already mature when he arrived and was at least 50-years-old.
"Therefore his minimum age is 176-years-old. He is the oldest inhabitant on St Helena and is claimed to be the oldest living tortoise in the world.
"He lives in the grounds of Plantation House which is the governor's residence with five other tortoises who are much younger than him.
"Apparently he remained nameless for the most part of his residence in St Helena until he was named by Governor Sir Spencer Davis in the 1930s.
"He feeds on the grass of the main paddock.
"Jonathan is still very active despite his age and adores attention, he is a real poser.
"He seems to be sightless in one eye, but does not let that slow him down."
It is thought Jonathan, from the species Testudinipae cytodira, was brought to St Helena from the Seychelles as a mature adult in 1882.
His remarkable existance has come to light after the photograph was discovered as part of a collection of Boer War images taken by a man named L.A. Innes who had a studio in the British overseas territory's capital Jamestown.
The pictures were recently sold at auction for £4,000 by Andrew Smith and Son auctioneers near Winchester, Hants.
Further investigation by the auctioneers revealed the tortoise in the picture was Jonathan who was still alive.
St Helena has a population of more than 4,200. Its greatest claim to fame came when Napoleon was exiled there in 1815.
He was held prisoner there until his death in 1821 and is buried there.
Another tortoise, Timothy, who was a ship's mascot in the Crimean War, died at his home at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, Devon, in 2004, aged 160. The castle's Rose Garden had been his home since 1935.

The Future of Tires (or Tyres)

2011-12-07T14:08:00.001-05:00

Bridgestone is showing off their latest, non-pneumatic tire. As you can see, it is a pretty fancy looking thing, which uses advanced polymers to replicate the flexible but tough traditional rubber tire.

Right now, each tire can only support 150kg, which means these are destined for Hover-round duty, not your daily sleigh ride.

Interestingly Bridgestone is saying they are working on ways to stop objects from becoming lodged inside... I am not sure why a simple cover won't work.. but there it is.

Probably a long way down the road before you are rolling on these puppies, but still, interesting to see.

The New Xbox Software Sucks, As Do All Random Squares

2011-12-06T22:49:00.001-05:00

What the hell is with the new standard in user interfaces being this shitty array of random squares and images?

Xbox just released a major new update and... it sucks. It makes the whole interface instead of a logical and clearly laid out ribbon and card view, some kind of bullshit graphic design wet dream.

The one we just lost was a major improvement over the original, and crappy sort of "blinds which randomly pop in from the side" interface... but goddamn if I don't hate this new square craps approach

Old (good) interface

New, shittacular, interface

Oh yeah... and see that up there? That is A FUCKING ADVERTISEMENT on the system you shelled out $250, and pay $50/yr just to play online games.

And they are not the only ones. The new google marketplace? What the hell is that? It's terrible. I have no idea where I am and the whole thing sucks to read. I suppose it is good for some completely ADD moron hipster who loves random advertising images in all kinds of different sized squares popping up at them, but as far as I am concerned, it sucks.

For example, old android market

New android market

Because yes, I really want to pay $10 to read Stieg Larsson on my phone...

All in... we have Microsoft to blame for all of this. Much as the Zune and then Windows Phone 7 have not been commercial successes, everyone in the industry came to believe that their live tile system of showing information in randomly sized cubes, with randomly sized text where you may or may not be able to read what the hell is going on, is the way of the future. This is much like when everyone realized that the card view in webOS was by far the best way to do multitasking, and everyone but Apple (multitasking is for losers who don't spend $1,500/yr on their phones) copied them.

The thing is... I hate it. I have heard that the original (Zune and now WP7) is actually very good, but I have never used it. Everything I have used like this.. I hate. They all suck. I use the Amazon app store as much as possible just to protest how crappy I think the Google market is. And on a final note, to sites which used to be blogs (you know, vertically scrolling) such as Jalopnik or Gizmodo (Gawker - go eat some poo), what the hell is with the new random articles in random sizes format? Again - ribbons, cards, scrolling - these are good things. Random ass shit flying at me in all directions? Not good.

Om nom nom nom

2011-12-06T07:30:00.001-05:00

Two Behemoth Black Holes, the Largest Ever Discovered, Could Swallow Billions of Suns - http://pulse.me/s/3LU21

A new woolly mammoth

2011-12-06T00:41:00.001-05:00

Scienists to Clone Woolly Mammoth - http://pulse.me/s/3LVmc

Toyota going all sporty??

2011-12-05T09:13:00.001-05:00

I think Toyota likes all the attention it is getting from the ft86. It likes the attention so much it says it might build two more sports cars (which would bring the number of exciting cars Toyota has built this decade to... three).

They claim they might build a supra successor and a small sporty coupe. Now whether this is for real or just Toyota pr guys just getting real excited about being popular at the car shows for once remains to be seen.

Study: Toyota considering Supra successor and sub-86 sports car - http://pulse.me/s/3Kq3l

Putin's Iron Grip Falters

2011-12-05T08:53:00.001-05:00

Russia is finally tired of the rampant corruption of Putin's United party.

In parliamentary elections (though really, Russia is not a parliamentary system and is closest to the US form of govt) Putin's party will manage only fifty percent of the vote and that is with rampant corruption, ballot stuffing, hacking of election monitors, and of course, bribery.

Putin will still win next year's election of course. And the real opposition parties are not even allowed to run, so the other fifty percent of the duma will probably just rubber stamp everything which action figurine Putin wants done anyway.

Hopefully, at some point, Russia wakes up and is able to elect a modern and at least slightly moral leader. The country right now is a total backwater, with third world healthcare, massive levels of crime, incredibly short average lifespans, and a growing inability to attract foreign investment because of how the United party screws over any foreign company it feels like.

I think interesting enough is that soup nanny in the US seem to have a positive view of Putin. I am not sure why that is, other than the fact he is certainly an amusing character. But as a leader, the need for him ran its course years ago, and Russia now needs a new leader for a new age.

Russia: Putin's Party Barely Hangs onto its Majority - http://pulse.me/s/3KZo5

Newt???

2011-12-04T22:08:00.001-05:00

How the hell did this guy end up in the lead?

I mean all really care about is who is the most electable in the general election, because another four years of Obama and I should probably switch from getting my MBA to a public policy degree so I could find a job.

And clearly, this guy is not electable in 2012. I mean... it's the Newt. Yeah, '94 was a good move, but who in the middle actually likes this guy?

It's just to bad to me that Giuliani never got his act together, or that Chris Christie didn't pull an Obama and decide to run.

Anyway, good article:

The Economist | The Republican nomination: The day of the Newt http://www.economist.com/node/21541030?frsc=dg%7Cb via @theeconomist

Making It

2011-12-04T22:07:00.001-05:00

The Economist | Technology and society: More than just digital quilting http://www.economist.com/node/21540392?frsc=dg%7Cb via @theeconomist

Obama to take a well deserved break

2011-12-03T14:10:00.001-05:00

And by well deserved, I mean we are all probably better off with him not attempting to run the country.

But seriously, Obama and his family will spend 17 days renting a $3,500/night mansion in Hawaii.

Anyone who still thinks Obama is anything other than a typical liberal, progressive, college professor, elitist hypocrite... yeah.. get your head checked.

Destroying a country builds up a sweat.

Nuggets from Norm's Noggin

2011-12-03T12:40:00.001-05:00

Wet logs will burn if the fire is hot enough.

25k views

2011-12-02T14:17:00.001-05:00

Just want to say thanks all for reading and following along with this sometimes rambling, sometimes interesting (I hope), sometimes absent, and sometimes relevant forum of my thoughts and ideas.

Just hit 25k views for the year =)

Coyote Wolf Hybrids

2011-12-01T12:33:00.001-05:00

Interesting. In the absence of true competitors and with humans afraid of wolves but okay with coyotes... turns out that what is flourishing is a coyote wolf hybrid, able to take down larger prey, but still able to scavenge (and avoid pissing off humans) the way coyotes are.

Coyote-Wolf Hybrids Have Spread Across U.S. East

Predators bred with Great Lakes wolves, then moved south, DNA shows.

A coyote is seen in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park in June.

Photograph by Elijah Goodwin, Whimbrel Nature Photography

Christine Dell'Amore

National Geographic News

Published November 7, 2011

Hybrid offspring of coyotes and wolves have spread south along the eastern seaboard, a new DNA study confirms.

Scientists already knew that some coyotes, which have been gradually expanding their range eastward, mated with wolves in the Great Lakes (map)region. The pairings created viable hybrid offspring—identified by their DNA and skulls—that have been found in mid-Atlantic states such as New York and Pennsylvania.

Now, new DNA analysis of coyote poop shows for the first time that some coyotes in the state of Virginia are also part wolf. Scientists think these animals are coyote-wolf hybrids that traveled south from New England along the Appalachian Mountains.

The study also identified another coyote migration route moving through the southern states.

"You have a situation where you have these two waves of coyotes coming into the mid-Atlantic, a terminus for coyote colonization," said study leader Christine Bozarth, a former research fellow at the Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

Northern Virginia in particular seems to be a convergence point for coyote migrations, Bozarth said—and the animals' numbers are increasing there, especially in suburban areas where food is more plentiful.

(See "Coyotes Now at Home in Eastern U.S.")

Versatile Coyote Already Widespread

Coyotes are originally residents of middle America, particularly between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.

By the end of the 20th century, the versatile animal—which can eat almost anything, from shoe leather to fruit—had spread to nearly every corner of the U.S., even New York City.

The coyote is "one of the animals that will be left at the end, like the cockroaches, raccoons, and rabbits," Bozarth said.

For the new study, Bozarth and colleagues collected coyote scat samples in northern Virginia and extracted DNA. The team then compared the coyote DNA with that of representatives of every canid species found in eastern North America. (Get a genetics overview.)

The study, published October 17 in the Journal of Mammalogy, found evidence that Virginia coyotes mated with Great Lakes wolves but not with the rare red wolf, which is hanging on in just a few isolated spots in the U.S. South.

That's "good news for the red wolf," whose survival is already threatened by inbreeding, which reduces the species' genetic diversity, Bozarth noted.

Hybrid Coyotes Taking Down Deer?

For now, it's impossible to say how "wolfy" the newly identified coyote-wolf hybrids really are, Bozarth added—just that "at some point down the line, a coyote mated with a Great Lakes wolf-even generations ago."

Scientists have not yet studied the behaviors of the Virginian hybrids to see if they're killing bigger wildlife or otherwise changing the ecosystem, Bozarth added.

But other East Coast hybrids seen alive or identified by their remains are noticeably larger, with more wolf-like skulls, jaws, and teeth, Bozarth noted. (Seepictures of new hybrid species appearing in the warming Arctic.)

Given this, coyote-wolf hybrids "should be able to do things like take down deer, which a little, scrappy Great Plains wily coyote would not be able to do on its own," Bozarth said.

Indeed, the research highights "just how successful and adapted these hybrids are to the eastern forests," said Roland Kays, curator of mammals at the New York State Museum in Albany.

For instance, Kays's research on the previously known eastern hybrids has shown that a third of their diet is deer—a much higher proportion than in western states.

Coyotes in Mid-Atlantic "Here to Stay"

Jonathan Way, a wildlife biologist and head of the Massachusetts-based education group Eastern Coyote Research, called the new paper "timely."

Coyotes coming from the west are moving not only through the Great Lakes but also south of the region, through Ohio. But until now, it was unknown how that southern route of colonization was influencing coyotes in the mid-Atlantic region, Way said by email.

According to Way, these two fronts of coyote expansion have probably made the Virginia animals "hybrids of a hybrid."

That's because the Virginia hybrids are most likely a combination of northeastern coyote-wolf hybrids, which are slightly bigger and more wolf-like, and nonhybrid coyotes coming through Ohio.

"The results of the paper are clear and important, and confirm that mid-Atlantic coyotes have DNA from [Northeast] animals ... and western coyotes," Way said.

Whatever their exact genetic makeup, one thing is clear, study author Bozarth emphasized: Coyotes and coyote-wolf hybrids in the mid-Atlantic are "absolutely established—they're here to stay."

One Big Crappy Company

2011-12-01T12:03:00.001-05:00

I actually know someone who works here... and while I believe they are good at what they do, the culture of this company seems centered around plundering government funds. Now, are they as bad as the big ol boys like Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon and General Dynamics... but this is pretty bad.

REPORT: ENGINEERING FIRM ‘CH2M HILL’ CUT THOUSANDS OF JOBS AFTER RECEIVING $2 BILLION IN STIMULUS

Posted on November 30, 2011 at 6:32pm by Christopher Santarelli
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For all those who said that the Solyndra revelation would just be the first of many, pat yourself on the back.

A new investigative report released by Accuracy in Media Wednesday, reveals that CH2M HILL, a Colorado-based consulting, engineering and construction firm, received nearly $2 Billion in stimulus funding despite a history of kickbacks, poor conduct and contaminating their own workers. While they are not in danger of suffering the same bankruptcy plight as Solyndra, CH2M has laid-off thousands of workers since receiving taxpayer stimulus. And like Solyndra, CH2M has donated thousands in campaigns finances to Democrats.

The report’s author, Rusty Weiss, notes that CH2M has received $1.961 billion in contracts from the Recovery Act despite a history of violations and fraud, to name a few:

In 2004, the Energy Department withheld $300,000 from the firm for poor conduct.
Between 2005 and 2006, the company was fined nearly $400,000 total for the radiological contamination of workers.
A “major spill” occurred in 2007 that resulted in over $683,000 in both fines and settlements to local agencies.
Timecard fraud at the CH2M HILL Hanford Group between January of 2002 and October of 2008, that was “widespread” and “routine.”
False claims and paid kickbacks at the Hanford nuclear site between 2003 and 2005 led to a recent settlement in which CH2M HILL agreed to pay the federal government $1.5 million

How did a company with a track record like that become the recipient of billions of dollars from the federal government? Giving over $380,000 to Democrats during the 2009-2010 cycle and over $512,000 during 2007-2008, including $45, 337 to Barack Obama, may have had something to do with it. In addition to political contributions to individual politicians, the AIM study cites the Center for Responsive Politics that reports that CH2M was lobbying their special interests via $455,000 worth of itemized expenditures in 2010.

As stimulus funding has begun to dry up, CH2M is proving that the “green” jobs funded by the taxpayer are in fact unsustainable. AIM reports:

“Reports of staff reductions at CH2M began in January when KEPR-TV announced that 1,350 layoffs were coming in September due to the end of stimulus funding. The company had to organize a job fair for those affected by these layoffs, as well as an additional 1,000 laid off men and women at the contractor’s Hanford site. Hanford started the year with 12,000 workers but lost 2,000 positions nine months later.”

Aside from raising similar questions about the way the DOE is delving out taxpayer dollars, CH2M was directly involved in the plundering of a $535 million loan to Solyndra. $9.6 million of that loan given to CH2M HILL to design Solyndra’s solar manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. Weiss writes;

“With millions of dollars having been secured, CH2M clearly outdid themselves on the Solyndra project, building a facility the likes that had never been seen before in the heart of Silicon Valley. The facility covers 300,000 square feet, ran a price tag of $733 million, and was equated by some to the Taj Mahal.”

To boot, CH2M reportedly has ties with “Green Energy Czar” Van Jones, who sat on the Apollo Alliance board that helped write the stimulus. This is the same Apollo Alliance that Glenn Beck said “aspires to destroy the U.S. economy by having the federal government fund green jobs scams.”

Jones has received recognition at the Aspen Institute award ceremony which is co-sponsored by CH2M, been a keynote speaker at events co-sponsored by CH2M, and served on the San Francisco Clean Tech Advisory Council with Jill Sideman of CH2M.

See the Accuracy in Media full report for the breakdown of CH2M Hill’s history of problems, ties to Democrats and lobbying, as well as other investigative reports.

Tea Party vs. Occupy - Fantastic Video

2011-12-01T11:48:00.001-05:00

Will A Euro Bailout really be an out?

2011-12-01T11:47:00.001-05:00

Interesting article from the Atlantic on whether the Eurozone can really be saved.

Reasons to Worry About the Prospects for a European Bailout

NOV 30 2011, 1:02 PM ET 320

I've been asked to explain my reservations about the idea that "we know what will work" in Europe. Why wouldn't a eurobond/ECB intervention work? After all, it worked here?

I should emphasize that I am by no means sure that it wouldn't work--I just sort of wonder. And that these reservations are not shared by a whole bunch of people much smarter than I am.

With those caveats, here are the differences I see between a possible Eurobailout, and the indisputably successful actions of Treasury and the Fed in 2008*.

1. Their bank debt is a much bigger than ours was. Here's the list I blogged last year of bank assets as a percentage of GDP:

Luxembourg 2,461%
Ireland 872%
Switzerland 723%
Denmark 477%
Iceland 458%
Netherlands 432%
United Kingdom 389%
Belgium 380%
Sweden 340%
France 338%
Austria 299%
Spain 251%
Germany 246%
Finland 205%
Australia 205%
Portugal 188%
Canada 157%
Italy 151%
Greece 141%

For comparison purposes, ours was about 82% of GDP.

Now, these numbers have obviously changed somewhat since then, but it's a good rough guide. An American bailout of the banking system was painful-but-feasible. Depending on the level of impairment, a French bailout of their banking system might simply not be.

2. We had more fiscal run room than Europe.

Here's the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2008 and 2009 (the last year the OECD had available)

Germany has a lot of room to borrow, but France and others have much less. And these figures are several years old; everyone's debt-to-GDP load has risen since then.

But this is the real constraint:

Maybe these differences don't look so big. But that's because we think about taxes the wrong way around. Most people think that raising a 5% tax rate to 10% is more noticeable (and painful) than raising a 50% tax rate to 55%. After all, the first represents a doubling of your tax rate; the second is only a 10% increase.

But this is exactly the wrong way to think about it. The pain of a tax hike is determined not by how your current tax rate compares to your earlier tax rate, but by how your current disposable income compares to your earlier disposable income.

Doubling the tax rate from 5% to 10% decreases your disposable income by about 5.25%. But raising it from 50% to 55% decreases your disposable income by 10%. That's a much bigger whack.

When the crisis started, the United States was spending less than 40% of GDP at all levels. Many European countries--including ones who are supposed to provide guarantees--are now at 50%. They can borrow the money today (though the facts in that first chart will constrain them) but they have to pay it back at some point, which means more taxes.

3. They are having a sovereign debt crisis; we weren't. There was no question about the US credit rating, and indeed investors were piling into treasuries. Essentially, the US government had unlimited free money to guarantee our bank obligations. Even the appetite for bunds is not so strong these days.

4. There are fundamental structural problems with the euro area that no integration plan will fix. No one thought the US might break up or stop using the dollar. But even if we stop the panic and put some sort of new structure into place that will check budget deficits, investors have to be aware that the result will be a periphery semi-permanently crippled by a currency that's far too expensive for their productivity levels.

5. The world used up a lot of its firepower during earlier phases of the crisis. I'm not just talking about those debt and spending numbers highlighted above. I'm talking about the political capital, the diplomatic capital, the institutional capital. In 2007, if this had happened, the US could have taken a much more aggressive role in helping Europe to get its act together. These days, even if Obama wanted to do the right thing at the expense of his sure and certain defeat in 2012, he'd never get Congress to go along. Similarly, my sense is that the last few years have frayed whatever pan-European goodwill existed.

The World's Coolest Base Camp

2011-12-01T11:43:00.001-05:00

I want this. Actually, I want this as a permanent ski cabin, not as a high-alpine base camp, but any way you look at it, this thing is freaking cool.

Design Spotlight: LEAP

High Living

By Ben Bowers on November 30, 2011

The living ecological alpine pod, or LEAP, wears its heart right on its name tag and provides all of the benefits of traditional mountain shelters — think trekking basecamps, not lavish homes — but with a significantly smaller environmental footprint. Much of the LEAP’s “green” gains are derived from construction technologies for building planes and ships. Each LEAP is comprised of up to five modular living units, plus a biological toilet. The entrance unit’s thermally isolated inner door, storage/drying rack, and rescue equipment hangar is optimized for the risks of high-alpine conditions. In terms of creature comforts, the refined living interior is fully customizable and includes a pantry, interior lighting, an electric induction cooker, adjustable bunks and optional panoramic windows. On the technology side, each LEAP can be outfitted with a variety of self-sufficient core systems to automatically diagnose structural issues, monitor weather conditions, maintain emergency communication channels and collect power via photovoltaic films on the exterior.

Once the appropriate prefabricated modules are selected, the entire shelter is assembled off-site and then flown to its desired mountain location via helicopter. In the event changes must be made to the basecamp, modules can be added with minimal crew support later on. At the end of the LEAP’s useful lifespan, removing the structure is just as easy and leaves no lasting marks on the surrounding environment. While total cost hasn’t been disclosed, the company has stated that these shelters will be “highly competitive with the traditional solutions.” We take that to mean expensive, but on par with what a horde of sherpas with engineering degrees and hammers might go for.

Check out more photos of the LEAP’s interior for your browsing pleasure after the break.

Learn More Here

Occupy This

2011-12-01T11:09:00.001-05:00

I have one, main, central, important, all-encompassing, pressing, vital, critical, key, crucial point.

This IS NOT the mask of the "occupy" movement. The occupy movement is not in any way related to the aims of Guy Fawks, anarchists, or the popular V character from the V for Vendetta movie (one of my all time favorite movies).

In V for Vendetta, V was a libertarian, fighting for rights, not a "occupier" fighting some shittastic amalgam of socialism, communism, 60's nostalgia and liberal entitlement.

Nothing pisses me off more than seeing this mask being used for something completely contrary to what it should mean, all because these idiots are too stupid to know the difference between fighting government and fighting capitalism. Morons.

Danger, High Voltage

2011-12-01T10:21:00.001-05:00

Is the Volt dangerous?

The short answer is yes... and no.

I love big trucks. If you understand physics, you understand that big trucks are more likely to roll over than low slung cars. However, big trucks only tend to roll over due to driver error. This was proven beyond any doubt with the firestone scandal on the Explorer. So are big trucks more likely to roll over? Only if you, as a driver, don't know how to drive.

Is the Volt more likely to catch on fire? Yes - it seems. Li-ion batteries are inherently not that stable. Your iPod is more likely to blow up than your Sony Walkman was. Lithium Ion is inherently not a very stable design, and requires a lot of safeguards to stop it from cascading and going boom, or setting on fire.

So, if you end up in a major accident with your Volt, it is probably more likely to blow up. However, there is no evidence that the battery is a risk if it has not been in a major accident. The findings basically say "if you are in a major crash, remove the battery" - and yeah, don't store the car in your garage.

There are two things which surprise me. First of all, the conservative news outlets have jumped on this as part of their anti-green agenda (here's looking at you Fox News, and your "Hybrid from Hell" segment). Why give GM such a hard time? First, I am actually really proud of GM building a legitimate alternative to the Prius. I mean, I hate the Prius and you would have to pay me to drive one, but it has been a major success story for Toyota. Second, GM has been really open and helpful through the investigation, unlike Toyota, whose strategy with the sudden acceleration "problem" on the Prius (turns out, the real issue was that Prius owners were terrible drivers) was to try and cover it up. And finally, why give the Volt such a hard time? This is an issue with lithium ion batteries, not the Volt.

And as a little background, why are we using li-ion in the first place? In this case, it really is because of big oil.

Background

The modern nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) electric vehicle battery was invented by Dr. Masahiko Oshitani, of the GS Yuasa Corporation, and Stanford Ovshinsky, the founder of the Ovonics Battery Company.^[1] The current trend in the industry is towards the development of lithium-ion (Li-Ion) technology to replace NiMH in electric vehicles. Some manufacturers^[who?] maintain that NiMH batteries are important to the commercialization of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV)s and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) because Li-Ion technology, while functionally superior due to its higher specific energy and specific power, is prohibitively expensive and relatively untested with regards to its long-term reliability.^[2]

[edit]General Motors and the US Auto Battery Consortium

The Ovonics technology was acquired by General Motors for use in its EV1 electric car, but production was ended shortly after the NiMH batteries began to replace the lead-acid batteries of earlier models

In an interview in the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, Ovshinsky stated that in the early 1990s, the auto industry created the US Auto Battery Consortium (USABC) to stifle the development of electric vehicle technology by preventing the dissemination of knowledge about Ovshinky's battery-related patents to the public through the California Air Resources Board (CARB).^[3]

According to Ovshinsky, the auto industry falsely suggested that NiMH technology was not yet ready for widespread use in road cars.^[4]Members of the USABC, including General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, threatened to take legal action against Ovshinsky if he continued to promote NiMH's potential for use in BEVs, and if he continued to lend test batteries to Solectria, a start-up electric vehicle maker that was not part of the USABC. The Big Three car companies argued that his behavior violated their exclusive rights to the battery technology, because they had matched a federal government grant given to Ovonics to develop NiMH technology. Critics argue that the Big Three were more interested in convincing CARB members that electric vehicles were not technologically and commercially viable.^[3]

In 1994, General Motors acquired a controlling interest in Ovonics's battery development and manufacture, including patents controlling the manufacture of large NiMH batteries. The original intent of the equity alliance was to develop NiMH batteries for GM's EV1 BEV. Sales of GM-Ovonics batteries were later taken over by GM manager and critic of CARB John Williams, leading Ovshinsky to wonder whether his decision to sell to GM had been naive.^[3] The EV1 program was shut down by GM before the new NiMH battery could be commercialized, despite field tests that indicated the Ovonics battery extended the EV1's range to over 150 miles.^[3]

[edit]Chevron and Cobasys

By 2001, the Ovonics technology was owned by the oil company Chevron.

In 2001, oil company Texaco purchased General Motors' share in GM Ovonics. Texaco was itself acquired by rival Chevron several months later. The same year, Ovonics filed a patent infringement suit against Toyota's battery supplier, Panasonic, that ultimately succeeded in restricting the use of its large format NiMH batteries to certain transportation uses.^[5] In 2003, Texaco Ovonics Battery Systems was restructured into Cobasys, a 50/50 joint venture between ChevronTexaco and Ovonics, now known as Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) Ovonics.^[6] Chevron's influence over Cobasys extends beyond a strict 50/50 joint venture. Chevron held a 19.99% interest in ECD Ovonics as of a public filing made January 15, 2003.^[7] In a later filing on May 17, 2005,^[8] Energy Conversion Devices announced that they had exercised an option to purchase back 4,376,633 shares of stock from a Chevron subsidiary, and would cancel and return them to authorized-unissued status. This is the exact number of shares that was listed as owned by ChevronTexaco in the January 15, 2003 filing.

ChevronTexaco also maintained veto power over any sale or licensing of NiMH technology.^[9] In addition, ChevronTexaco maintained the right to seize all of Cobasys' intellectual property rights in the event that ECD Ovonics did not fulfill its contractual obligations.^[9] On September 10, 2007, ChevronTexaco (now known as simply "Chevron") filed suit claiming that ECD Ovonics had not fulfilled its obligations. ECD Ovonics disputed this claim.^[10] The arbitration hearing has been repeatedly suspended while the parties negotiated with General Motors over the sale of Cobasys back to GM. As of March 2008, no agreement had been reached with GM.^[11]

Cobasys contracts demonstrated that the company was willing to sell smaller NiMH batteries (less than 10 amp-hours) for use with hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). For instance, in March 2007, GM announced that it would use Cobasys NiMH batteries in the model year 2008 Chevrolet Malibu hybrid.^[12] Toyota uses NiMH batteries in all of its HEV models. However, Cobasys' sales policies raised questions about its willingness to sell larger format batteries for use in EVs and PHEVs.

In her 2007 book Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America, Sherry Boschert argues that large-format NiMH batteries (i.e., 25 amp-hours or more) are commercially viable but that Cobasys would only accept very large orders (more than 10,000) for these batteries. The effect is that this policy precludes small companies and individuals from buying them. It also precludes larger auto manufacturers from developing test fleets of new PHEV and EV designs. Toyota employees complained about the difficulty in getting smaller orders of large format NiMH batteries to service the existing 825 RAV4 EVs. Since no other companies were willing to make large orders, Cobasys was not manufacturing nor licensing any large format NiMH battery technology for automotive purposes. Boschert quotes Dave Goldstein, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Washington D.C., as saying this policy is necessary because the cost of setting up a multimillion dollar battery assembly line could not be justified without guaranteed orders of 100,000 batteries (~12,000 EVs) per year for 3 years. Boschert concludes that, "it's possible that Cobasys (Chevron) is squelching all access to large NiMH batteries through its control of patent licenses in order to remove a competitor to gasoline. Or it's possible that Cobasys simply wants the market for itself and is waiting for a major automaker to start producing plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles."^[13]

UK Unions vs. Jeremy Clarkson

2011-12-01T10:06:00.001-05:00

In the UK, public sector unions are striking because they are going to lose some of their wages and benefits in the wake of the recession.

Wake up jackasses, the public sector has done better through the recession than anyone else. You guys are overpaid, overstaffed lazy unions which are leeches on the productivity of the nation.

After they went on strike last week, Clarkson said they should be taken out back and shot. In response:
" The public sector union Unison says it is taking urgent legal advice about the comments made by the Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who spoke on The One Show about people who took part in yesterday's strikes.

Mr Clarkson said strikers should be "taken out and shot".

Prime Minister David Cameron told ITV's This Morning that he was sure Mr Clarkson did not mean what he said, but Karen Jennings of Unison said the TV presenter should be sacked."

So yeah - this has gone as far as the Prime Minister having to point out that perhaps, just perhaps, Clarkson was using a figure of speech.

This I thought was a well written rebuttal in the Telegraph

Jeremy Clarkson's critics should be taken out and shot

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: December 1st, 2011

934 Comments Comment on this article

Jeremy Clarkson got into tremendous trouble last night for suggesting on BBC's The One Show that the public sector "workers" who took part in yesterday's strike should be shot.

This is silly. It should be patently obvious to anyone who is familiar with his style or has seen one of his programmes – ie: everyone in the world – that Clarkson didn't mean it. For one thing, being an informed fellow he would be perfectly aware that the government simply hasn't the money to spend on bullets right now. For another, he must know that it's perfectly possible that among all the diversity outreach consultants, renewable energy/recycling advisers and union reps who spent their day on the picket lines/early Christmas shopping in Bluewater yesterday at least a handful might actually have jobs which make some tiny contribution to the nation's well being – so killing at least those ones would be counterproductive.

Oh, plus, he was employing it as a figure of speech. I know this won't mean much to half the morons who complained to the BBC yesterday, but the English language is an extraordinarily rich and nuanced thing. Sometimes, when the speaker says that someone should be shot, he really does mean it: if, say, it's an officer giving orders to a firing squad about to shoot a deserter or a looter in 1915. More often, though, he doesn't. For at least the last fifty years "they should be taken out and shot," has been a socially acceptable, perfectly unexceptionable way of expressing colourfully and vehemently one's distaste towards a particular category of unpleasantness, be it striking Unison workers, revolting students, poorly performing members of your football team or the Lib Dem members of Cameron's cabinet. Context is all.

The BBC I know is particularly squeamish about such matters. I remember once appearing on a BBC arts programme on Radio 4, in which I suggested that Robbie Williams deserved to be killed for making some particularly dismal album. Though I said it in the mildest way and it was quite obvious that my fatwa was really not an incitement for Radio 4's listeners to rise up, hunt down Williams mercilessly and appear outside Broadcasting House with his head on a spike, the presenter nevertheless blanched and felt compelled to offer an instant on-air apology stressing that I hadn't meant what I said.

Well, duh.

What the BBC and its brain-dead apparatchiks clearly fail to understand at moments like this is that they are actually endorsing and cultivating our culture of abject stupidity. If Lord Reith were still around, he really would want the entire BBC staff – management especially but also grinning half-wit presenters like The One Show's Matt Baker and Alex Jones – taken out and shot for what they have done to a once-fine institution.

In a sensible, rational universe, the natural response of those presenters to remarks like Clarkson's would be a knowing chuckle – as if to say: "Ah there goes old Jezza again. What a card he is. But of course, that's why we had him on the programme in the first place: to say the kind of things that Jeremy Clarkson would say on television." Thus, they would be signalling to those viewers idiotic enough to seek to take umbrage at Clarkson's remarks that there was no point in doing so since the comments were obviously flippant.

Instead by looking shocked, the presenters indicated to viewers that they were perfectly within their rights to take offence at what Clarkson had said. This signal was then amplified by the official apology issued by the BBC immediately afterwards. Thus it is that our state broadcaster, whose propaganda we are forced to finance with a compulsory levy, sends out a signal to the world that the English language is no longer a complex, beautiful, nuanced thing in which meaning depends on tone and context but something we should treat with extreme caution and use in its most literal sense lest someone, somewhere take offence.

The damage the BBC is wreaking on our culture in ways both large and small is all but incalculable. The Clarkson affair is at the smaller end. At the larger end, I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to giving you the gory details of the BBC's complicity in the Climate Change scam – as revealed both in the Climategate 2.0 emails and in Christopher Booker's magisterial new report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation. And I'm quite sure Roger Harrabin is too.

You Can't Be Sirious

2011-12-01T10:00:00.001-05:00

Siri is cool... but not that big a deal.

Available on android is a swype keyboard which is put out by Nuance, the people behind Siri. It has fantastic voice recognition, and is far better than the iPhone keyboard.

Second - semantic search is cool.... but.... remember ask.com?

Yeah. Who won? Ask.com or google.com?

Android is awkward, but fast. And I have a hard time seeing that a voice-based semantic search is going to be more helpful, or faster, than a google search.

Only in Sweden

2011-12-01T09:56:00.001-05:00

Ahh Sweden. Where The Pirate Bay is a political party. Where protection from the DMCA is written into the bill of rights. Where wardriving was more common than drive bys.

This is a country which knows how to (LAN) party.

Dreamhack, officially (according to the Guinness Book of Records) the world's largest LAN party, offered up all sorts of gaming thrills along the lines of StarCraft II and Counter-Strike to the 12,000 attendees. It looks like the air was thick with excitement, perspiration -- and hopefully a little air freshener.

A New Stradivarius?

2011-12-01T09:49:00.001-05:00

This is pretty damn cool. Using CAT scans scientists have been able to more or less replicate a Stradivarius violin..

I have always been intrigued by these violins, because they are one of the few things in the world which have truly been "lost" e.i. what is older is in fact better. Think about it - there is little that we still do (for example not medieval faires etc) which we are actually worse at today than we were hundreds of years ago.

Antique Stradivarius violin 'replicated' by radiologist

By Leo KelionTechnology reporter

Dr Sirr's team have made three copies of Stradivarius violins so far

A Stradivarius violin has been "recreated" using an X-ray scanner normally used to detect cancers and injuries, according to researchers.

The US-based group used a computerised axial tomography (CAT) scanner on the 307-year-old instrument to reveal its secrets.

They then used the data recovered to build "nearly exact copies".

The team said the technique could be used to give musicians access to rare musical equipment.

Their findings have been presented to the Radiological Society of North America at a conference in Chicago.

Gunshot

Radiologist Steven Sirr first had the idea of using a CAT scanner to take images of violins in 1988.

He was an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota at the time and often brought his violin to his office to practise when it was quiet.

One weekend he was called to supervise the scan of a gunshot wound victim.

"I put the violin of the side on a table near the scanner and then after the patient went to surgery I turned round and saw my violin and thought - well it would be interesting to scan that," Dr Sirr told the BBC.

He had expected to see a wooden shell surrounded by air, but was proved wrong.

"There is a lot of anatomy - I'm used to evaluating anatomy in people and I saw a lot of detail that I had no understanding of, so I took the CT scan to my friend John Waddle, who is a violin maker, and I gave him the images," he said.

Replicas

Dr Sirr says he now plans to replicate a Stradivarius cello

Over the following years the two men scanned many hundreds of instruments, including guitars, mandolins and other violins.

Scans of the older instruments revealed worm holes, small cracks and other damage that helped create their distinctive sounds.

Eventually the two men borrowed a Stradivarius known as "Betts" from the US Library of Congress which still had an original label placed by its Italian creator, Antonio Stradivari, inside its body.

Teaming up with another violin maker, Steve Rossow, they proceeded to create three replicas.

Computer cut

To do this they took more than 1,000 CAT scan images from the original instrument and converted them into a file format used to resemble three-dimensional object in computer-aided design (CAD) software.

"We used the scans to determine the density of the woods that made up the violin - that could only otherwise be done if the violin was dissected and measured - and of course that would never happen," Dr Sirr said.

The files were then fed into a CNC (computer numerical control) machine. It used the data to carve the violins' back and front plates, neck and the "scroll" carving at the neck's end using various woods picked to match the originals as closely as possible.

These were then assembled and varnished by hand.

"The copies are amazingly similar to originals in their sound quality," said Dr Sirr.

"When we make the violin we copy the changes that have occurred over more than 300 years including the shifts in the wood - the small deformations in the front and back plates that occur over time because of the forces of the strings and the other parts of the violin."

Cheap classics

Dr Sirr said he hoped to repeat the process with other antique instruments and hoped that his work would one day pave the way for students to have access to "nearly exact copies" of the originals.

The dean of the world-famous Juilliard school in New York, welcomed the possibility.

"Every string player graduating from any great conservatory faces an immense crisis of how do you obtain a violin that is at the level that you need to have a really first rate career," said Ara Guzelimian.

CAT scans are more commonly used to diagnose tumours, cancers and infections

"With the inflation of prices of rare old violins - and obviously Stradivari at the top of that list - it's far out of the reach of anyone but investors and investment trusts. So if there was a way of putting a superb violin in the hands of a young violinist at a fraction of the cost it would be a huge step forward."

A well-preserved Stradivarius known as the Lady Blunt was sold in June for $15.9m(£10.2m) at a charity auction. That was more than four times the previous record price for an instrument made by the Italian craftsman.

Experience

Renowned luthier Samuel Zygmuntowicz noted that violin makers have long studied Stradivari, Guarneri and other classic instruments to match their sound.

He said Dr Sirr's work may have helped democratise the process by making it possible for more people to study such antique violins. But he added that the most highly skilled luthiers would remain in demand.

"This process will streamline that effort to copy an instrument," said Mr Zygmuntowicz.

"But the very last stretch - the very last 2% - still involves exact judgements about relative thicknesses of the wood, the exact strength of the bracing, the exact varnishes and wood preparations and general optimising of the whole form.

So I would say a skilled maker with this in his hands could save himself a lot of work, and an unskilled maker would save himself a certain amount of education."

2011-11-22T08:35:00.001-05:00

No deal for US 'super-committee' - http://pulse.me/s/3mIXw

2011-11-22T08:32:00.001-05:00

Turning Patrolmen Into Soldiers: How Did We Let This Happen? - http://pulse.me/s/3nfDz

2011-11-22T08:31:00.001-05:00

Terminator-Style Contact Lens Closer to Reality - http://pulse.me/s/3n1Kn

2011-11-21T12:35:00.003-05:00

Pentagon Tests Hypersonic Flying Bomb - http://pulse.me/s/3heA9

2011-11-21T12:35:00.001-05:00

Mongolia Will Build Enormous Block of Ice to Beat Summer Heat - http://pulse.me/s/3f4Xd

Top 10 Signs Someone is a Terrible Driver

2011-11-14T16:36:00.001-05:00

Driving is a dangerous game. There are a lot of people who think they are safe drivers because they are slow, inept, and have managed not to be in an accident for 10 years. Yay statistics. But the reality is, about 1 in 10 drivers are just freaking terrible. They can't get out of their own way, they make random decisions, they are irrationally aggressive (as opposed to rationally aggressive, which actually makes the roads more efficient, according to legitimate research) and above all, they are always in my fucking way.

So here are the Top 10 Signs the person in front of you is an idiot

10. They drive a Toyota. Any Toyota, ever made. While not every Toyota driver is a bad driver, as a population, they are pretty terrible on average.

9. Brake early, brake often. If you see them hit the brakes because the car 200ft in front of them hit their brakes... avoid. This usually calls for undertaking on the highway, or praying for a passing area on a local road.

8. They drive a crossover. Crossovers are the automotive equivalent of an old guy in a middle management position... yeah...

7. They have a lot of bumper stickers.

6. Can't follow rules of the road. Stopping on a quiet street to let someone make a left turn is not courteous, it is dangerous. Same thing goes for not understand the right of way at intersections, turning rules at traffic lights, etc. The rules of the road exist for a reason. Everyone understands if it is busy and you let someone out, but if you are random and irrational about it, you are a danger to all.

5. They have an expensive BMW or Mercedes. In this country, BMW and Merc drivers are generally idiots. Not sure why, but there it is.

4. Irrational tailgating. There are times tailgating makes sense: on the highway, in the left lane, when the guy is holding up traffic. But there are also times when it does not. The most common of these is when there is a lot of traffic, you have no space in front of you, and as far as the eye can see, there are taillights 30ft apart. Then the asshole comes up behind you, thinking he will magically teleport forwards. A quick tap on the brakes is a good one here, or my new favorite courtesy of Saab: super bright rear facing fog lights =)

3. They sit in the left lane on the highway, with no one in front of them. This one drives me crazy, and it is so common in the US it is basically an epidemic. This means that the driver is simply not paying attention... which means they suck at driving, which means it is your patriotic duty to highbeam/undertake/tailgate.

2. They have an Obama bumper sticker. There is about a 95% correlation between having an Obama sticker and having the driving ability of a tuna (fins - make it hard to use the wheel..). I could go into why this might be the case, generally related to being an idiot, apathy, a incoherent philosophy, a twisted world view, or the fact that most of them drive Toyotas or crossovers... but let's just leave it at 95% and call it a day.

1. They drive a Prius.

The Sad Story of the Suzuki Kizashi

2011-11-02T14:50:00.001-04:00

About a year and a half ago, Suzuki released a really good mid-sized car. A car that no one is buying.

An interesting question to answer is, why?

The Kizashi is a very competent, sporting family sedan.

The reviews of the car were very good, such as this from autoblog:
"By the end of our time with the 2010 Suzuki Kizashi GTS, we were totally on board with comparing this car to the Acura TSX and Audi A4. Then we started comparing prices. A base Kizashi S starts at $18,999, and while we wouldn't put anything but the GTS model up against an Acura or Audi, it's worth noting that every Kizashi model comes very well equipped and the same engine, transmissions, steering and brakes are used in the base S, SE and most expensive SLS model."

But despite the fact that it handled well, was inexpensive, practical, and overall seems like a good car... it has not sold well at all. It has sold so poorly in fact that Suzuki may pull out of the US market completely.

So what went wrong?

To me, the biggest thing is styling. If someone is going to buy a second-tier brand because it is better value and more sporty than the mainstream models - they want their choice to stand out, they want it to be a big middle finger to all the Camry owners out there (this is one reason, I think, that the WRX 2002-2007 was so successful).

So - for anyone who wants a A4, but does not want to spend A4 money - this is a great option, because I am sure they are going to be liquidating the stock.

A new #1 Smartphone maker

2011-11-01T17:07:00.000-04:00

Quick, who is the biggest smartphone marker in the US?

If you said Apple you would have been right... a month ago.

Today, HTC passed Apple as the largest single seller of smartphones in the US.

The aforesaid handset maker edged out Apple and Samsung by shipping 5.7 million smartphones.

All told, it owned "around a quarter of the market," with Samsung (4.9 million) claiming the second spot and Apple (4.6 million) pulling in for the bronze. Conspicuously absent from the leader board? RIM, which saw its volume decline 58 percent from a year ago and its US market share sink from 24 percent in Q3 2010 to just 9 percent this quarter.

Pretty damn crazy when you think that not long ago, HTC was a quirky niche phone manufacturer...

The New Saab 9-3

2011-11-01T16:51:00.000-04:00

This is the first ultrasound of Saab's new baby

Actually - it is so low res because it was pulled from an investor brochure... but lets be honest here... it looks damn good.

While I really like my 2010 9-3, it has never really stood out in a crowd. This new one - it will.

Here's hoping that the new model will also have the performance to match, because the current 9-3 is fun to drive, but more of a sporting compact family sedan than a true sports sedan.

Worst Car Chase Ever

2011-11-01T01:37:00.002-04:00

So I love a good car chase. The French Connection, Ronin, The (original) Italian Job, Gone in 60 Seconds... these are classics.

I just had on "The American" and... well... George Clooney chases down a bad guy while driving a Vespa. Sure, the bad guy is driving some crappy Opel or something like that, but still.. a Vespa? It's pretty easy to get away from a scooter, just put your foot on the gas pedal..

The 7 Billionth Person Was Born Today

2011-10-31T15:04:00.002-04:00

According to population estimates, today is the day that the 7 billionth person (currently alive) will be born.

It is a staggering number.

Bring on the Niche Automakers

2011-10-30T10:36:00.000-04:00

The US auto industry is known for big cars, and big car companies. Unlike the UK (where the big car companies went under due to unions and excessive government interference.... sound familiar?), the US has never had much of a tradition of niche car manufacturing. While we have long had volume tuners (Saleen, Shelby etc), they take cars which are already registered and tune them to within an inch of the law. We have never had the little production companies which characterize the nature of the UK car industry.

Until now: (from autoblog)

"Low volume vehicle manufacturers may soon find it easier to have their products approved by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Congressman John Campbell (R-Calif.) has introduced the "Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturer's Act," which aims to introduce a regulatory system specifically designed for companies that build fewer than 1,000 vehicles per year. Currently, it's difficult for boutique carmakers to shoulder the burden of safety and emissions evaluations tied to bringing a new vehicle to market. The bill, which has bipartisan support, would make it possible for the Environmental Protection Agency greenlight low-volume cars and trucks that use engines that have already been EPA-certified in other vehicles.

That would allow small carmakers to skip the costly exercise of having their creations subjected to emissions evaluations. The legislation also has provisions for alternative-fuel powerplants, which would theoretically make it easier for green-car startups to take to the roads. The bill is also being advocated by the Specialty Equipment Market Association."

This means we can look forward to lots of little car companies building cool vehicles like expedition vehicles, funky British sports cars, and of course, mid-engined exotic monsters =)

More Bad Karma

2011-10-27T11:07:00.000-04:00

Bad kitty

The new Fisker Karma has been rated a... subcompact by the EPA. This, despite the fact that it is 16.5ft long and weighs 5,300lbs... for comparison, that is a foot LONGER and almost the same weight as my '96 Chevy Tahoe...

The hilarious part is, that this govt. funded savior of the environment only gets... 20mpg, when it is running on gas. It can go about 40 miles on electric power - which means like all these range extended vehicles - real world mileage will vary. If you commute 10 miles to work... great. If you take this thing on the highway... you would have been better off getting a Corvette, because that gets 26mpg highway. Oh yeah, and it's actually a sports car, not an something which can get beat by an old Buick (the Karma only has 175hp to move that ton of mass around).

Called it

Warren Buffett is a Buffoon

2011-10-26T10:39:00.001-04:00

Read this (if you haven't yet) then get pissed off, then come back here.

From the start:"I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched." My answer? Fuck you.

If you and your "mega-rich friends" wanted to pay more taxes, do you know what you could do? Any ideas genius? You could PAY MORE TAXES. The IRS has been accepting checks since 1965. You could give them everything you have, if you think you really should be taxed more. Nothing is holding you back asshole, put your money where your mouth is.

But no, this is the reality:He says he pays a 17% effective tax rate. First of all, fuck you, because I pay higher taxes than that, so it is not a matter with the tax code, the problem is that you are spending millions on lawyers to HIDE YOUR INCOME FROM THE IRS.

If you really believed you should be taxed more, maybe you should not hide your income? Dipshit.

Secondly, a lot of his income actually falls under cap-gains taxes (which are double taxation in the first place) and which have a much lower effective tax rate... because they are double taxation.

Finally, because it would rather use its income for growth and investor returns, Berkshire Hathaway has not been a model tax payer. It owes taxes from 2002-2009 due to creative accounting, and pays an effective tax rate in the 20's, rather than the 32% they "should" be paying if they did not shelter income.

Long story short, STUFU Warren.

Amazon's on Fire

2011-10-26T10:29:00.001-04:00

The Amazon Kindle Fire and new line of cheap Kindles have been a huge success (this is not really surprising, considering they cost about 30-40% less than the competition, and they are really nice products).

The company said that sales have from by 44%, and that last month it had its "biggest order day ever for Kindle, even bigger than previous holiday peak days." In other words, Amazon is kicking ass, taking names, and making other players in "the space" a wee be anxious.

And because of that, Amazon's shares are... down 12%

Analysts are idiots is the short answer as to why this happened. Because Amazon is selling the hardware at a loss, they saw only one number - Amazon missed its quarterly earnings target. And because of that, they hammered the stock. This is so amazingly stupid, I can barely believe it. Amazon is clearly going after an install base, using price as a hammer to knock Apple's overpriced iPad off its pedestal -- something Motorola, HP and Samsung were all too stupid to do, resulting in their pathetic market share (and the touchpad fire sale - which did finally get it some market share....)

Again, as I wrote before, Amazon is first an foremost a store. The original Kindle was an amazing tie-in to one aspect of that store (books), but the Kindle Fire is a portal to everything that Amazon offers. From the excellent Amazon android app with its one-click two day shipping (damn I love that), to movies through Prime, to the Amazon app store (the only one you can use with the Fire) and of course, to books: these are not just tablets, they are recurring revenue streams. Even if the tablets average only a 2-3 year lifespan, Amazon will be making back their margin many times over. Any analyst too stupid to see that should be fired.

Bad Karma

2011-10-25T00:34:00.000-04:00

As I reported a long time ago, the US govt should never have been in the business of making large and risky loans to companies based purely on the sunshine coming out of their ass.

The failure of Solyndra finally has people talking about one of the other terrible loans we made to appease Obama's whims: namely the totally stupid loan we gave to Fisker so that they could develop and build a wildly overpriced hybrids sports car.We gave over $500MM to a company with no history, no proven management, no factory, and not even a terribly innovative product. Why did we do this???

Well, now it has all of a sudden become a big thing to talk about how the Karma is not even being built in this country..... but actually, that was in the business plan when we loaned them the money. The truth is that the amount of money to start a real mass market car company these days is more or less obscene, as brand, dealerships and govt regulations all play their part. The most recent estimate I heard is that it would cost about $10 billion to create a car company with a viable brand and dealership system in the US and Europe.

The loan to Fisker simply does not make sense on a different level as well. This is not a green car for the masses. This is a famous car designer's dream of making a car in his own name. A car which is less practical than a Corvette.

It is very difficult to get a new car company off the ground. Regardless of how much press and free publicity you get, passing government regulations, actually manufacturing the car, selling it at a profit, and maintaining reliability and customer service are all very difficult steps.

Which reminds me, Apterra, once another Golden God of the media, is falling apart. Interestingly, they have posted a consulting project asking my business school to help them now that their business model has totally fallen apart and their investors are clamoring for money.

Yes... it is a flying sperm

Electric cars will come when they are ready and when the market is today for then. Unlike our good friend Obama says, it is not the role of the govt to tell people what they want.

Cavity searches for the highway

2011-10-24T14:31:00.001-04:00

Scary article from The Atlantic on how the TSA is now moving into patrolling our streets (because clearly - they have done such a good job with the airports)...

What scares me the most is the attitude of those currently in postitions of power in this country - everything that we do is seen as a privilege, not a right, and they believe the government has the right to "inform" the people as to what their opinions should be.

Mission Creep: This Tennessee Highway Is Now Patrolled by TSA

OCT 24 2011, 9:25 AM ET 9

Despite billions spent on airport security, federal bureaucrats have escaped the terminal. Is your 4th Amendment safe?

Most air travelers now endure naked scans or genital pat-downs by gloved agents of the government without surprise or complaint. But before invasive security became normal, there was a backlash. And at its height, Transportation Security Administration boss John Pistole said something revealing. "I see flying as a privilege that is a public safety issue. So the government has a role in providing for the public safety and we need to do everything we can in partnership with the traveling public, to inform them about what their options are," he told reporters. "I clearly believe that passengers have a number of options as they go through screening. But the bottom line is, if someone decides they don't want to have screening, they don't have the right to get on the plane." What perturbed me wasn't his defense of mandatory security screening. It was his assertion that air travel is a special "privilege" the feds grant citizens.

I felt the same uneasy twinge when Janet Napolitano, who heads the Department of Homeland Security, told USA Today that "if people want to travel by other means, they have that right." Because where does that attitude end? Is it a "privilege" to attend the Super Bowl, where TSA agents scan the crowd for suspicious behavior? Or to ride on a Metro system, an Amtrak train, or a boat -- other forms of transportation that Napolitano has mused about targeting? As Mark Browning wrote in 2010, using hyperbole and reduction ad absurdum to mock Napolitano, "The bus system could come next. Come to think of it, so could travel by automobile... Here, we find that not only are the crevices of our bodies searched, but so are the contents of our cars. If you don't like it, don't drive. Nowhere in that living document, the Constitution, are we assured of our right to move without hindrance from point to point by private automobile."

Of course, that would never really happen... would it?

In the local news report above, which my colleague James Fallows notes here, a Tennessee TV news broadcast reports that TSA is already operating on highways in the state. The brilliant reasoning? "Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons. Perhaps he can be forgiven for this absurd quote. After all, his job is to keep Tennessee safe from terrorists. By definition he's guarding against a remote threat. But it ought to make us all upset that the federal government assessed its counter-terrorism resources and decided that the best use of scarce funds would be random checks on vehicles on Tennessee highways.

Feel safer?

The TSA agents are urging all drivers to "say something" if they see something suspicious, which brings us to another great quote from the piece: "If somebody sees something somewhere, we want them to be responsible citizens," says Paul Armes, TSA Federal Security Director. "Report that and let us work it through our processes to vet the concern they had when they saw something suspicious." Granted, if I were driving (rather than traveling by train) to Chattanooga, and I saw an 18 wheeler with a "Death to America" bumper sticker and fertilizer spilling out the back, I'd call the cops; but if there were any actual terrorists on the highways of Tennessee, wouldn't their explosive filled truck look, from the outside, like any other truck?

The last thing America needs is to let TSA and its absurd, security-theater loving bureaucrats out of the airport. Reports a local newspaper: "Larry Godwin, deputy commissioner of TDSHS, said the checks at the weigh stations were about showing the people of Tennessee the government is serious about transportation safety." But quotes like that in fact show that they aren't serious about transportation safety so much as the appearance of it. I'd consent to beefing up airport security even more if it meant being able to keep TSA agents inside the terminal. The notion of random searches spreading everywhere in American life, whether you're exercising the "privilege" of going to a sporting event or driving down the highway, amounts to an unconstitutional surrender to terrorism in places where we've never even been hit by it.

Android Patent Licensing and Litigation..... is ridiculous

2011-10-24T14:24:00.000-04:00

Yes - what this is saying is that people are licensing FROM Microsoft so that they can continue producing Android devices. Turns out that the big 'ol boy has a few patents on this little thing called "an operating system" and they are none to please about the Android model of open source copying/duplication.

Camaro ZL1 - True Value

2011-10-24T14:12:00.000-04:00

Was reading Autoblog, and interestingly, these two came up one below another (see below).

The interesting part to me is that, yes, the McLaren is an amazing car... but it's only 20 seconds faster round the 'ring than... a Camaro... I mean, the Corvette has long been a giant slayer, especially the Z06 and then ZR1. But the Camaro? Welcome to the big leagues.

I am genuinely impressed with what the latest crop of American muscle cars gets you. From the 300hp, 30mpg $25,000 mustang up to this ($65,000???) beast, you get one hell of a lot for your money.

On a related note - my hat goes off to GM for understanding - finally - that "driving excitement" means handling well, as well as horsepower.

2012 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 specs divulged

By Zach BowmanRSS feed

Posted Oct 24th 2011 1:01PM

Comments22

General Motors has been noticeably tight-lipped about the specifications for its 2012 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, leaving enthusiasts to salivate and daydream over the sorts of possibilities that can arise from a supercharged, all-aluminum V8. Now we can wonder no more. According to a post in the Camaro5 forums, dealers already have the skinny on the meanest Camaro of them all. The model will reportedly arrive with a blistering 580 horsepower and 556 pound-feet of torque under its wide hood. Those figures are good enough to hustle the 4,120-pound muscle car around the fabled Nürburgring in a skinny seven minutes and 41 seconds, though something tells us that has as much to do with the car's 51/49 weight balance.

Two wheel options will be available, including a five-spoke and a 10-spoke design, and buyers can pick from a total of nine colors. A six-speed manual gearbox is standard equipment, though a six-speed automatic will also be available for those buyers who wish to leave the cog-swapping to the car. The Camaro ZL1 will also come with the same four-pack console gauges as the SS model, though a boost gauge is now part of the party. Head over to the Camaro5 for a full look at the vehicle's specifications.

News Source: Camaro5

McLaren releases montage of MP4-12C lapping 'Ring in 7 min, 28 sec

By Zach BowmanRSS feed

Posted Oct 24th 2011 12:30PM

Comments20

It's finally happened. The good people at McLaren have taken their latest wonder child, the MP4-12C, out for a bit of abuse around the Nürburgring to see how the supercar would perform on one of the world's greatest road courses. With Horst von Saurma-Jeltsch, Editor In Chief of Sport Auto, behind the wheel, the Mclaren MP4-12C was able to clip around the 'Ring in seven minutes and 28 seconds. That puts the carbon-fiber creation just ahead of vehicles like the Porsche 911 GT3 and Pagani Zonda F and four seconds behind metal like the Gumpert Apollo Sport.

Unfortunately, the video after the jump isn't an uncut clip of the MP4-12C doing the deed. Instead, we're treated to a quick synopsis of the vehicle's development as well as a brief dissertation on what makes the Nürburgring so special to manufacturers and

Get your motors out of my wheels

2011-10-24T09:54:00.001-04:00

It's a funny thing, car design. Over the past few years, if you looked at the work of many top students, you would see a recurring theme of amazing (or atrocious) looking concepts all made possible by having their electric motors built right into the wheels. Turns out that Audi have been playing around with that design, and... it sucks.First of all, even just in terms of design, there is too much unsprung weight. It's like trying to walk in ski boots. Or dance in ski boots for that matter (not recommended) .But then the real world also kicks in. Turns out that having the motor in the hub is not a good thing when it cones to durability... basically, every little bump gets pounded right into your motive force. And if you get low profile tires...Score one for front and mid engined cars. Internal combustion may be doomed, but it'll put up a hell of a fight.

nuggets

2011-10-24T09:44:00.000-04:00

Deal structure should always be tied to financing structure and strategy.Don't buy a getaway car with your credit card.

Captive Tigers

2011-10-24T09:26:00.000-04:00

What happened in Ohio wasckearly very sad. I am not going to say the police did anything wrong on this one, it was a tough situation.However, this is what really gets me: they now estimate there are 50,000 tigers living in the Us. WTF??? Where the hell are these 50,000? And who is keeping them? Surely we only have 1000-2000 drug lords, a couple hundred Russian mobsters, a handful of athletes dumb enough to do this, and one Mike Tyson... but where the hell are the other 48,000 coming from? Are there regular people out there keeping these things as pets? They say the problem is that they are given as pets when they are "small" but then they grow up to be... well.. freaking lions (I know, who could've seen that one coming?). That 50,000 is far more than there are in the wild (thought to be about 32k). Which means if you want to see a lion, forget Africa, head to Georgia.

Robot on Demand

2011-10-19T16:29:00.001-04:00

Foambot Creates Itself Out of Sprayable Foam, Becoming Whatever Robot You Need - http://pulse.me/s/2qxI0

Human Genetic Variation and Access

2011-10-19T16:18:00.000-04:00

From an interview with Juan Enriquez, a writer, investor, and managing director of Excel Venture Management:

One concern about human enhancement is that only some people will have access, creating an even greater economic divide. Do you think this will be the case?

In the industrial revolution, it took a lifetime to build enough industry to double the wealth of a country. In the knowledge revolution, you can build billion-dollar companies with 20 people very quickly. The implication is that you can double the wealth of a country very quickly. In Korea in 1975, people had one-fifth of the income of Mexicans, and today they have five times more. Even the poorest places can generate wealth quickly. You see this in Bangalore, China. On the flip side, you can also become irrelevant very quickly.

Scientists are on the verge of sequencing 10,000 human genomes. You point out this might highlight significant variation among our species, and that this requires some ethical consideration. Why?

The issue of [genetic variation] is a really uncomfortable question, one that for good reason, we have been avoiding since the 1930s and '40s. A lot of the research behind the eugenics movement came out of elite universities in the U.S. It was disastrously misapplied. But you do have to ask, if there are fundamental differences in species like dogs and horses and birds, is it true that there are no significant differences between humans? We are going to have an answer to that question very quickly. If we do, we need to think through an ethical, moral framework to think about questions that go way beyond science.

Space Fog

2011-10-19T16:09:00.002-04:00

Nope, not talking about "fog of war" or "I can't think of any damn thing because I have no idea which way up is" or even "I can't see right now because of this freaking sun in my window"

I am talking about water, in space.

A lot of water.

Enlarge Close

Astronomers have found a massive water vapor cloud, floating around a black hole in the universe, marking the largest discovery of water -- anywhere.The reservoir is gigantic, holding 140 trillion times the mass of water in the Earth's oceans, residing 10 billion light years away.

140 trillion times. You are going to need some really good windshield wipers on that space shuttle of yours.

The amazing thing to me is that this is still water in space. It makes no sense. Everything we know about space says... there is no water floating around.. some ice, sure, but no water. Water is meant to be special, rare, uncommon. There's water vapor in the Milky Way, although the total amount is 4,000 times less than in the quasar, because most of the Milky Way's water is frozen in ice.

How did it get there?

Well, it turns out that it is the byproduct of a massive black hole/quasar, which instead of shooting out beams of energy as most quasars do, has decided that it would be much more cool to be the universes's largest water gun. Clearly, this quasar is the fun loving little brother of the quasar family, much more interested in intergalactic wet-t-shirt contests than blowing stuff up with giant laser beams.

Inheriting Traits, not Genes

2011-10-19T15:59:00.000-04:00

Turns out, yet again, that genetics is more complicated than we once thought.

According to new research... well, read on:
The findings, published online today in Nature, present a modern-day version of Lamarckian inheritance, in which acquired characteristics can be passed to offspring without changes to the genetic code.

Marks of Methuselah: Glowing regions show chemical marks on the genome ofC. elegans identical to those in ancestors with life-span-increasing mutations—even though this descendant lacks the mutation.
Travis J. Maures

BIOMEDICINE

Worm Offspring Inherit Longevity Even without the Genes

Worms given life-span-enhancing mutations produce offspring that lack the responsible genes but live longer anyway.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2011
BY SHARON BEGLEY

Audio »

Although much more research remains to be done, the new study raises the tantalizing possibility that if Grandma practiced caloric restriction—which affects the expression of longevity-enhancing genes—her descendants might reap the benefits.

The inheritance occurs through "epigenetics": alterations not in the coding sequence of DNA (those ubiquitous A's, T's, C's, and G's) but in chemical changes that affect whether genes are expressed. One such change involves histones, proteins that act as spools for a cell's long strands of DNA. Some of the best-known longevity genes, those belonging to the Sir2 family, make proteins that alter histones.

The tiny soil-dwelling worms C. elegans, when given mutations that make them live longer, transmit that trait even when their progeny don't inherit the life-extending mutations.

In the new work, Brunet's graduate student,Eric Greer, blocked the three key proteins that make up the ASH-2 complex by mutating their genes. As expected, the worms lived longer—typically, an extra seven days beyond their lab life span of 20. Then Greer bred the mutated worms with normal worms until their descendants no longer had the mutations. Nevertheless, the progeny still lived longer, as did their own descendants: even though their genes for the key proteins were normal, an epigenetic memory of longevity persisted. As a result, their DNA was coiled up tight, and their suspected aging genes were sidelined.

This is also interesting in my believe that pretty soon we are going to see significant changes in the human lifespan, above and beyond our current biological limit. It seems that you might be able to pass the traits on simply by practicing (or therapy) which extends the normal lifespan.

The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants - The Atlantic

2011-10-16T19:27:00.000-04:00

The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants

OCT 13 2011, 10:36 AM ET 332

Glen Whitman asks why there are fewer startlingly beautiful flight attendants any more:

For an economist, the most fascinating aspect of Pan Am is the highly attractive flight attendants -- or rather, stewardesses, since the show is set in the early 1960s. If you're young enough, you might think that's just TV. But I'm just old enough to remember flying in the 1970s, and I recall stewardesses who really were, in fact, hot. Okay, I was too young to understand the concept of "hot" -- but I was definitely aware that I was being attended by some very pretty young women.

Not so anymore. Flight attendants aren't necessarily unattractive now, but they're no more fetching than people in any other service profession that doesn't get tips. And what's changed? In a word, deregulation.

Prior to airline deregulation, which was passed in 1978 and completed over the next few years, airfares had been set by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). For many routes, those airfares were simply too high. As predicted by a simple supply-and-demand model, airlines were willing to offer more flights at these high prices than customers were willing to buy. Under normal market conditions, that would lead to falling prices. But since the airlines legally could not compete on price, they competed on quality instead. They offered better service, better food, and... wait for it... more attractive stewardesses.

When deregulation came along, however, it became apparent that as much as male customers might have enjoyed the eye candy, they weren't willing to pay for it. Higher quality might seem like a good thing, but it's really only good if the benefits exceeds the cost. More attractive staff can command higher wages. The airlines could have continued to pay them, if the higher quality had attracted more customers. But as it turns out, most people just wanted to get where they were going, fast and cheap. Deregulation fueled a democratization of air travel, making what once was a luxury item available to nearly everyone. The number of people who fly at least once a year has more than doubled since 1978, while the population has grown by about 40%. These new customers have flocked to the airlines with no-frills or low-frills service, a trend that continues to this day (JetBlue, anyone?).

As a libertarianish economics blogger, I would love if this story were true. But I'm skeptical. Stewardesses used to be subject to all sorts of extremely strict rules: they couldn't be married, couldn't gain weight, couldn't get pregnant, couldn't be much over 30. If you fire everyone who violates those rules, then yes, you will select for a much "hotter" group of women than the current crop.

You could probably still get a large group of young, hot women to take a job that involves free flights all around the world. But those jobs are no longer open, because airlines stopped firing all the old, fat parents. Thanks to a combination of feminist shaming, union demands, and anti-discrimination laws. Moreover, once they no longer fired people over a certain age, union seniority rules immediately started selecting for older workers, in two ways: layoffs are usually last hired first fired, and older people have a lot of sunk costs in terms of pension accrual and seniority, so they're less likely to leave. If you fly a major airline, you'll notice very few stewardesses in their twenties.

In the 1970s, these trends would have been playing out; most stewardesses were still young. Now they're lifers. Any new airline can create a better looking workforce by hiring good-looking workers. But it can't guarantee that they'll stay hot. When the workforce is unionized and in it for the . . . pardon the pun . . . long haul, eventually you end up with what we've got: a workforce composed mostly of older and not particularly attractive people. Mirroring the larger American workforce.

You can argue that deregulation hastened this by making price discrimination fiercer, so that there were more layoffs, and airlines were less able to offer a wage premium that would attract better looking workers. But I suspect this played a minor role--less important than other trends, like the mass movement of women into the workforce. Fewer women were looking for a job that would let them travel for a few years before they got married, and there were better alternatives for a long-term career. Moreover, the changing workplace meant there were more female business travelers on expensive tickets--and they usually don't care whether the stewardess has a nice rack.

If you look at the national airlines in countries where anti-discrimination rules and/or unions are less powerful, like Qatar or Asia, you'll notice that they spend a lot of time here advertising . . . their hot stewardesses. (Also their lay-flat seats. But don't forget the super-hot stewardesses). That's not because they're in an oligopoly. It's because the domestic labor market lets them get away with it, and ours doesn't.

Verizon likes you, Wants to know everything about you

2011-10-14T09:01:00.000-04:00

BlackBerry Interplanetary Communications Lost

2011-10-13T20:13:00.002-04:00

CNN has some very, very bad news. Your BBM's to your martian friends may never reach their intended recipients, as the news service announced that BlackBerry service has been lost across the galaxy...

Seriously though, if you are BBM'ing martians, my girlfriend is a psychologist... give her a call...

Why Cops Are Corrupt

2011-10-13T19:27:00.003-04:00

Petty power leads to corruption, and attracts assholes who want to use petty power for their own purposes.

This is one of the reasons why a) the vast majority of cops are assholes, and b) cops almost universally corrupt in a petty and abusive sense.

For a funny story about all this.. read on (from Autoblog.com)

We're not sure what's more amusing about this story, the obvious and clichéd abuse of power or the retro charm of dialing the wrong fax number. C'mon, who even faxes anymore? We've gotten so used to people getting busted by accidentally e-mailing everyone in their address book or slipping up on Facebook that we almost feel sorry for the clerk in question, entangled by '90s technology. Almost.

Joann Reed, the records clerk for the sheriff in St. Clair County, Illinois, sent a three-page fax including a copy of a speeding ticket, with a handwritten note saying, "Dismiss this case" and "The guy is the son of one of our deputies." Ostensibly she meant to send the fax to the prosecuting attorney in the village that issued the ticket, but instead, she faxed the local newspaper, the Belleville News-Democrat, which is where we heard about the story.

Apparently unaware that karma already had her number, Reed's next move was worthy of the worst of Illinois politicians. Indeed, when the newspaper started asking questions, the one-time mayoral candidate pulled a Blagojevich, fabricating a story about trying to help a college student get out of the ticket and denying that she was currying favor for a deputy. Problem is, the newspaper did some more digging and discovered that, indeed, the $175 citation for doing 43 in a 20-mile-per-hour zone was issued to the 18-year-old son of a sheriff's deputy. Who says investigative journalism is dead?

Speaking of investigations, Sheriff Mearl Justus says he'll be launching one, telling the newspaper, "I'll take some action."

Hitting A Reef, and Bunker Fuel

2011-10-13T11:39:00.001-04:00

Clearly - this should not be happening.

Honestly - the captain is an idiot. Hitting a reef these days with a ship is like running into a library with your car. Buildings don't move, you can see them, they are well marked.

Not that it always matters...

Thanks to the sheer idiocy of the captain - who could face fines of as much as $8,700... big deterrent there... there are now 1,870 tons (1,700 metric tons) of oil and 220 tons (200 metric tons) of diesel possibly going to be dumped into the ocean, with 300tons already on the loose. For those of you who don't know, when they say "oil" they mean bunker fuel. Bunker fuel is the sludge at the bottom of the refining process. The reason they keep oil and bunker fuel aboard is because with new regulations (some of which my Dad was instrumental in getting passed around the US) ships have to burn diesel in coastal areas, but can still burn bunker fuel out in the open ocean. Bunker fuel is so nasty that it moves like molasses, causes skin rashes and eye irritation if you touch it or are in the fumes, has more carcinogens than a Marlboro convention, and NOx and SOx emissions

This is what it looks like when you burn it:

In conclusion - what the hell was this guy doing? For $99 you can get a GPS unit, and charts for NZ would probably be another $100. At that point, it would take me about 5 minutes to teach someone how to navigate well enough that you don't hit a goddamn reef.

Fat Fat Money

2011-10-13T10:43:00.002-04:00

I have to say - this is just disturbing. Realistically, income should not be related to weight. But... it is, and in a pretty fucked up way

What this is saying is that the skinnier you are as a woman, the more you make (yay misogynistic hiring practices...), while as a dude, you make more the fatter you are, because skinny guys are "weak" while the obese are "strong..."

A Sad Passing: Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T10:14:00.001-04:00

I rail on against Apple, I think the company is overvalued and I think its products are limited and overpriced.

At the same time, I have enormous respect for Steve Jobs. He completely changed the world, and for the better. He lead the personal PC revolution, realized before almost anyone else where the digital revolution would lead, greatly improved the quality of the modern computer, created the modern smartphone, and now brought about the tablet.

He was a man in a billion, and he changed the world. My respect goes out to you Steve Jobs, may you rest in peace.

The $99 Tablet

2011-10-06T10:01:00.000-04:00

The HP TouchPad may have sparked a new trend: the $99 Tablet.

Today, Best Buy dropped the price of the '7 HTC Flyer (a totally decent if simple android tablet) to $99.

At the same time, through woot and other locations, tablets (such as the Entourage Edge I use) have dropped to the price point. I would not be surprised if the current Nook Color (which is really what the Kindle Fire is a better version of in some ways) quickly drops to $99.

This is a good thing, as I have said before: tablets are a cool, but totally unnecessary third device. They make it easier to enjoy digital content at home, or when traveling. They are nowhere near as important as your laptop (if you work using a computer) or your smartphone (which is probably just as capable, but smaller, than your tablet. My phone is actually faster than my tablet or my go-to computer).

On a related note, India finally released its "$35" tablet - which actually costs $60, and has really low-end specs (like 200mhz processor low). In other words, its is already outdated and behind in terms of value. Still though, more cheap tablets and e-readers are always a good thing. See below:

India's much-hyped $35 tablet for students is a reality. But, like every other super-cheap education project, the price has jumped -- though in this case only to Rs 2,999 ($60). It turns out that the Aakash is actually an Ubislate 7 from Datawind (makers of the Pocketsurfer). Beneath the 7-inch 800 x 480 resistive touchscreen is a 366MHz Connexant CPU, 256MB of RAM and 2GB of storage (expandable via microSD) running Froyo and the Getjar market on top. The battery life is rated for a rather short three hours, and much less if you want to play HD video. In addition to the 802.11 a/b/g WiFi chip, you also get a GPRS modem to stay connected in rural areas. We wish India's HRD Minster Kapil Sibal's pet project all the best and if you want to see the device held snugly inside a Rs 300 ($7) keyboard folio, check out the picture after the break.

ObamaCare Pace Car

2011-10-03T14:02:00.001-04:00

Google's Drunk Cars

2011-09-29T19:46:00.000-04:00

Google has been building and testing driver-less cars. Today, the CEO of Google Eric Schmidt dropped this gem:

"Our computers drive our cars better than you do when you're drunk. That's our starting point."

Tesla Asks for More of Your Money

2011-09-29T18:42:00.000-04:00

I am no fan of Tesla Motors. I think it is a hype machine which never should have been allowed to go public, never should have received government funding and never should be allowed to hold another press conference for cars which don't exist.

Let me reiterate - this is a company which has always lost money - generally huge sums of money - and has only built and sold 1,800 cars. Those cars are essentially Lotus designed and built, other than a battery pack of 6,000 laptop batteries.

And yet, in the last round of idiotic loans to undeserving "green" companies, Tesla was given $465 million dollars. And now, it is going back to the well, and in the middle of a massive economic crises where the last goddamn thing we need is expensive electric toys for the super rich or mathematically challenged (or both), they are asking for more government funding.

They have not disclosed how much they are asking for, or even why they are asking - but they are asking. Supporters of the company think it is for it's new "affordable" sedan (rumored to cost only $40,000 or so). Others, including me, think that just like Bricklin's EV-1, Tesla has no where near the amount of capital needed to build a real brand (not a toy for the super rich), and will most likely go bankrupt before it goes mainstream.

Anyway - there are liberals out there whining that losses are the price of innovation. That is what the market is for you fucking assholes. Why the hell is the government getting involved you Ayn Rand villain idiots?

As a side note, a Tesla costs $110,000. That is twice what the car it is based on, the Lotus Elise (and it is a much better, more fun to drive car), plus 450,000 miles of gasoline. Yes - 450k, as in almost half a million miles. And don't give me "its better for the environment" - it isn't. You could use that money and buy thousands of tons of carbon credits, or plant a few thousand trees, and still have enough gas left over for 100k miles of driving.

Book Of Norm

HP Touchpad 3rd Chance

HP TouchPad 9.7” 16GB Wi-Fi Tablet

$169.99

HP TouchPad 9.7” 32GB Wi-Fi Tablet

$219.99

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