Book Of Norm

This is from Frankie (one of the main instigators behind the creation of the BoN), and was sparked by the Hindenburg post. "About the Titanic. It, infamously, didn’t have enough lifeboats. Why? One explanation seems to be because they did the minimum requirement – with no obvious reason to conduct their own research on what was possible or would be to their best advantage – the government regulatory body in the UK asked of them. Which was to have a certain number of boats per TONNAGE, not to account for lifeboats of the total number of passengers. Yet another classic example of the unintended consequences of regulation where government involvement obfuscates actors’ best interests and lulls everyone into a false sense of complacency just by its mere existence." Another interesting aspect to me about this is that the culprit is always said to be a lack of detailed enough, specific enough, and invasive enough regulation, rather than the existence of any regulation at all...

The thing is, Gordon Brown was never elected. Long the number two in the UK under Tony Blair (hmmm.. I guess you would call the Queen number zero) he came to power three years ago under a long-standing, and shadily defined agreement between him and Sir Tony. He could have called snap elections back then, and probably won, but he didn't. Now, as Labour looks to woo the Liberal Democrats (who have a lot more in common with Labour than they do with the Tories) he has stepped aside. While election reform (that whole STV thing) is the biggest stumbling block to an alliance with the conservatives, or so the pundits say, personally I think the biggest stumbling block is that they barely agree on anything, Mr. Brown was seen as the biggest stumbling block to an alliance between the Lib Dems and Labour. Which means... this is likely a move to try and get the Lib Dems to agree to an alliance with Labour. Which would get them ultimate power not very far. Because they still would not have a m...

There are certain moments in time, certain accidents and events, that shaped human history far more than the limited context in which they happened. In this line of posts I am going to talk about a few that have shaped the modern world, and why they need to be corrected. The first I am going to cover is the Hindenburg and Airships In May 1937 this giant German airship caught fire while attempting to dock in Lakehurst NJ. The disaster killed 35 of the 97 people aboard. What it did was end the era of the rigid airship. The disaster itself is terrible, but what we lost was far far more. Essentially, this is the equivalent of the Titanic leading to the abandonment of passenger ships by mankind. Seriously. Lighter than air rigid airships have all kinds of great benefits. First of all, they are lighter than air. Think about that. It means that when the engines cut out, you dont die in hurtling flaming ball of death. You just kind of float around, like you would in boat. Second, because you d...

US carbon emissions dropped 7% in 2009! Wooo!! Yeah, except the US GDP dropped 6.4%... not woo. The 0.6% real decrease there was because of the US shifting away from manufacturing and towards a service economy. The interesting thing is that the global recession has done more for 2009-2011 than any agreement at Copenhagen would have done. Specifically, as someone who deals with these projections every day, it is likely that US and EU oil demand has already peaked, and the big remaining hurdle is energy generation (which we figured out the answer to 50 years ago and then decided to not use fully. Humans are idiots sometimes.) As I have said before - I think carbon legislation is a good thing, it is illegal to dump anywhere else, why should it be legal to dump into the atmosphere? Though I believe there is no clear cut evidence on anthropogenic climate change, that does not give mankind the license to run about willly nilly dumping crap into the sky. Anyway, irresponsible government lendi...

This is well worth the less than two minutes it takes to watch. Obama has called for $100 million in spending cuts, which is pretty much like asking tiger woods to get rid of one mistress. check it out here: http://www.wimp.com/budgetcuts/

Callout today to the product over on Woot.com Have been using this little guy for a while now, and I am a big fan. It is pretty durable so far, has a good rechargeable battery, and a good screen so you can see what you are playing *cough* *cough* *apple sucks* *cough* *cough*... and it has all the normal good features such as an equalizer and ability to set songs in folders. Also, it just shows up as a usb drive on your computer, so you can easily just organize your songs, rather than using some crappy program to "sync" your music... so friggin annoying - why do we put up with that crap as consumers? Anyway, if you have been in the market for a good rechargeable mp3 player which clips on and is great for running or other sports, do yourself a favor and get one of these. Woot is the originator of One Day, One Deal. Every midnight (central) we launch an event: one sale that lives until it sells out, or the next midnight. ...

The Queen is of the opinion.. the the politicians should sort themselves out. As for who becomes PM, she has no opinion at all. At least any public one. This is a woman who once had Winston Churchill as Prime Minister, and has seen ten others come and go, reigned through socialism, Maggie Thatcher, and Tony. To be perfectly honest, she probably does not care much, as I can't see her being particularly impressed with any of the candidates. And the other part of it is that this is Queen Elizabeth II. She is a highly respected monarch, deeply popular with the people, who has been very respectful of the constitution. No political party would wish to involve her in the dispute - it would simply not be right to do so. It would be like a group of 10yr old boys going to the Principal of their school to decide who gets the ball first. It just is not done, and you would all look like a bunch of silly nincompoops for doing it. And that, quite simply, is something I love about British politics...