Book Of Norm

Nope So, here's the thing. The US could really use a high speed rail system. Hell, we could really just use a "rail system" which involved more than bumping your way from Boston to D.C. at 50mph. I really think late 19th century England had a faster rail network - it certainly had a much more capable rail network.  But here is the problem: congress. The house, in particular. You see, each of those men and women represent a small little area on the map (or actually - because of the travesty which is US voting districts, more like a discontinuous set of blobs on the map), and each of them wants to make sure of one thing with a high speed rail network: it stops in their district.  This is where physics comes in. People only like to be accelerated and decelerated at very low G loads. After a couple of G's people feel like they are on a roller coaster, and you would have more of a vomit comet than luxo liner. What does this have to do with congress? It means yo...

I love cheese. I mean I really love cheese. I buy it 2lb blocks. Everything I cook involves cheese in the same way that everything Danica Patrick does involves her boobs: it's a critical ingredient. And because of that (the cheese part), this is just awesome: Opa!  Flaming cheese closes tunnel in Norway after truck fire [w/video] By  Jonathon Ramsey RSS feed Posted Jan 23rd 2013 2:58PM 36 2 Comments 19 Behold, the power of cheese. Flaming fromage has clogged up the Brattlitunnelen in Norway for almost a week. According to  Reuters , a truck was hauling brunost, a caramelized Norwegian goat cheese, through the tunnel when the cheese somehow caught fire. Due to its high percentage of fat and sugar, the cheese can burn "almost like petrol" if it gets hot enough, and the fire-concentrating properties of the tunnel meant it took four days  to put out the flames. But there's still the toxic fumes to deal with – the tunnel near the costal town of ...

Read the story below. Personally, I think there is absolutely no way this guy should have been fired. I think it is brilliant. Hell, I would put him in charge of outsourcing other people's jobs and getting the work done better and cheaper. Ok, there is some lying involved, but really performance is what I would care about the most, and this guy seems to have been performing well. Fire him? Hell no, give him a raise (to hire more oDesk workers). WTF JAN 16, 2013 7:19 AM 57,298   150 Share Developer Sacked for Outsourcing His Entire Job to China   Jamie Condliffe The truly lazy are often the most creative. Like this developer, who was caught outsourcing his entire job to China so that he could spend his time at work... not working. The ruse— highlighted in a Verizon case study —was carried out by an employee called "Bob" who worked at an anonymous "critical infrastructure company". The trick was only spotted when some...

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

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

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