Book Of Norm

Writing a paper tonight, I was thinking on a recent cleaning of our apartment, and a past event which startled me while a bunch of us were sitting minding our own business in our living room. Doing a little research on wikipedia, I came across the house centipede, which is the object of my disgust. Turns out the little bugger actually eats other insects, including basically every bug that you dont want in your house like ants, termites, silverfish, bedbugs and cockroaches, but due to two very important facts, they have the distinct the ability to creep the shit out of me, when I dont give a damn about the vast majority of vermin. 1) They move at up to 16 inches PER SECOND. That is a freaky fast bug, and when they pop out at you, you know it because... 2) The largest recorded specimen is 6 1/2 inches long. And they are usually 1 to 2 inches. Needless to say, I squashed the shit out of the one that I saw back in the living room a while ago, and with my newfound knowledge, I will attempt ...

N. Korea has had 50 years of central planning and communism. South Korea has had 50 years of capitalist free markets. For all those who hate capitalism and what it stands for, this is a simple real world experiment. The result? South Korea has a very high and still rising standard of living, while North Korea is facing collapse after a decade of famine (though the actual collapse is quite unlikely due to the masterful manipulation of Kim Jong-il... and the continued forgery of $billions along with selling missile tech). For proof, take a look at a nighttime image of Korea, with Pyongyang as the one (small) dot of light north of the border.

"I will win. Don't worry about that," - Obama at a sunday night fundraiser. Cocky much?

Yes, I did just finish the book (called the Golden Compass in the US), and it was one of the best and most entertaining books I have read in a while. That said, this is about something else entirely... or is it? The US military has recently completed a northern research station which is looking at the ionosphere, the charged section of the Earths atmosphere which leads to the Northern Lights. Basically, they are bouncing around radio waves to see what happens, though a lot of other suggestions are floating around about the HAARP.. The downside to the article is that it simply takes the govts. word at face value and does little actual analysis of proposed theories, instead making them out to be raving lunacy. Of course, some of it is, but to use that to try and make the rest look mad is a typical and shallow approach. The Military's Mystery Machine ...

Really, actually, hot? Set Your Tongue On Fire Scientists discover that chili peppers produce actual heat By Jason Daley We all know that eating hot peppers can burn your tongue and make you sweat, but up till now researchers thought the process was a result of chemicals stimulating neurons rather than the actually production of heat. But Yasser Ahmed Mahmmoud at Denmark’s University of Aarhus has discovered something surprising—chili peppers can actually turn up the temperature, a finding that may have significant uses in the future It turns out, the spicy component in peppers, capsaicin (CPS), affects a muscle protein called SERCA. Normally, SERCA burns ATP, a type of molecular fuel, to “pump” calcium ions across a membrane to help our muscles relax after they hav...

The US is delivering humanitarian aid to Georgia. Which is a good thing. Whats even better is that they are using a carrier group to do it..

While there is still a distinct difference in story between the Georgians and Russians as to exactly how many Russian fighters were shot down, at least 5 were. This is interesting because Georgian air defenses were still operational. When Israel bombed the Syrian reactor last year, they managed to totally shut down the whole Syrian air defense network, with electronic warfare attacks and a backdoor "key." No such luck for the Russians, as the simple (network speaking) and isolated nature of Georgia's air defenses kept them up and running. The end result, sadly, is that Russia was still easily victorious, but it does show that Russia's status as a global military power is based more off numbers and blustering than it is actual capability. On a related note, chalk one up for the big G.W.B. as it is widely thought that his speech about the Russian attacks against Georgia was one of the main reasons they decided to halt their advance (i.e. seriously damaging Russia's ...