Book Of Norm

Can't make this shit up. Iran announced in one of its hard-line state run newspapers that it has launched its own flying saucer named Zohal (means Saturn). They released this picture: Flying Saucer Fars News Agency via Daily Mail Yeah..... in other words, they took a screen cap from a 60's movie (or is it a Star Trek episode? you never know - these Iranian photoshoppers are sneaky) They said that it was for aerial imaging..... ok, and then it turned out that the Zohal is way way way less exciting. It is just an RC quadcopter with a Nikon dSLR attached. Which is basically something I could build. Iranian Quadrocopter: Oh, you mean a flying copter , not a flying saucer ! Damn, I was really hoping for Iranian flying saucers...

On woot.com right now.. pretty damn cheap. Basically, this is a simple e-reader, with a color LCD screen. If it had a e-ink screen, I would buy it right now, but I am not sure about reading on a LCD screen and whether that will be any better than my netbook or Nokia 770. However, it gets amazon.com 3 stars, and $55 is $55 - and that is damn cheap. Perhaps most importantly, it accepts ePub - which means that you can get millions of books for it, and you can "check out" books electronically from your local library. The Sharper Image Literati 7" Wireless Reader $ 49.99 + $5 shipping CONDITION: New PRODUCT: 1 The Sharper Image Literati Wireless 7" Color Reader with 150 Free Books and Protective Case COLOR:

NASA and Lockheed Martin have reached a major milestone with their Orion Capsule, part of the cancelled, inefficient, and wildly over-budget Constellation program. Wait a second you ask... didn't you just say that it was part of a cancelled program? Yup. But this is NASA, which has become more of a public works program for Texas and Florida Senators than a legitimate research and exploration arm. Witness the fact that this damn thing is still being built, for no real reason. In the vacuum left when no one really stepped up to say why the hell this thing had been saved, just that it had been saved (for 'lets spend money in our home state' reasons more than anything else) NASA started to work on what to use it for. The end result? "the space agency and Lockheed Martin have turned Orion into a sort of multi-purpose space capsule that can serve as an escape pod and ISS resupply shuttle, but also as a potential deep space explorer." WTF. Operating it as a lifeboat for ...

An interesting new paper has just been released: Relativistic Statistical Arbitrage Yes - this is mixing Einstein and Michael Douglas. And the results? Pretty wild. Basically, very rapid trading and the ability to arbitrage prices around the world (arbitrage is exploiting price differences - basically it is like buying something very cheap off woot.com and reselling it on eBay for a profit, or buying something off eBay and selling it to your idiot cousin for even more profit. Full disclosure - I have no idiot cousins, they are all older than me, and smart. Too bad for me - but go out and arbitrage your cousins if you can) is increasingly being limited by... the speed of light. Yeah, literally, the speed of light. Trading at the Speed of Light The large red dots represent major financial markets, while the blue represent optimal trading centers to take advantage of the speed of light to execute trades faster between any two given markets. Such trading could bring financial capital to o...

Read "A Brief History of Everything" if you have not yet. First, it is hilarious. Second it is amazingly informative. And third, it shows you both what we know, and what we don't. What we don't know is the pre-history history of humanity. We think we do, but by "think we do" I mean there are generally accepted theories which are based on scraps of bone and a few stone tools, and which are directly contradicted by other scraps of bone and stone tools. And new stone tools just came to light. Pre-Clovis Toolkit A sample of pre-Clovis tools found in central Texas, dating to 15,500 years ago. Scientists say the trove of tools and toolmaking supplies could finally prove the Clovis people were not the first Americans. Courtesy Michael R. Waters Basically, these tools show that modern man first came to the US about 2,500yrs before everyone thought that they did. Which could shatter the whole "they came from the Bering straight" model. From PopSci: A preh...

This is literally true. And kind of funny, but not that important really. What is more important is why - him coming back early from his Latin America trip so that he could answer questions over just how much he has fucked up the Libya situation.

The population of Detroit has fallen 25% in the last 10yrs. That is pretty amazing. It means that the city, once a powerhouse of American manufacturing, now numbers fewer residents than before Henry Ford brought out the Model T. There are now only 713,777 people living in Detroit. The fall was finally driven by the black population moving out of the city and into the suburbs (or just away altogether). The only growing population within the city was hispanic, though I would guess if the census counted "hobo" as an ethnic group - they would likely be growing very rapidly.