Norms New World Blog

This is not a Tweet.

It’s a recording of my dripping tap. Thousands of readers have asked to hear it so here it is.

The length of the recording has been reduced to save madness from setting in.

[audio:https://blog.norm1037.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Dripping_tap.mp3|titles=Dripping Tap MP3]

One of the “features” of recent Christmases have always been the fact that they seem to start earlier and earlier in the stores. Shops are fully stocked, and set aside a large part of their shelf space to sell Christmas goods in November and often in October.

But now a new trend is developing. Christmas is finishing earlier and earlier. It’s been quite a surprise to see that more and more stores are removing their Christmas goods from their shelves. Instead of seeing mounds of Christmas goods including Christmas trees and decorations right up to Christmas Eve they’ve all gone!

As early as the 16th of December shops were clearing away their Christmas stock and Santa grottos and bringing back their normal displays. A few baubles and bits of glitter have been consigned to a shelf or two somewhere in the bottom end of stores.

This is strange really because if past experience is anything to go by people tend to leave their shopping to the last week of Christmas. There’ll be a lot of disappointed people this year.

Another strange quirk that’s appeared in connection with Christmas appears to be the availability of a choice of Christmas card. Gone are the shelf upon shelf of boxes of Christmas card selections.Additionally the boxes of cards have previously consisted of a very nice and “all different” selection, but not any more.

Cards available this year appear to have been restricted to a few packs of six or so cards where the design of each card is the same for the whole pack. No more festive scenes of people sledging down snow covered hills or carol singers gathered around a fiery brazier roasting chestnuts. All gone. Now it’s mainly abstract designs which appear to have very little to do with Christmas or with any other festive occasion in fact.

Such a shame really. I’m just waiting for stores next year to say that “Christmas sales have been very disappointing”. Well, they’ll only have themselves to blame.

The climate change argument will no doubt run and run. My view is that there’s no doubt some of the changes are due to the activities of our ever increasing population. There is also an element of ‘Mother Nature’ playing her part with natural changes taking place. There is also the effect of external forces like the Sun which periodically affects our climate as it’s solar activity waxes and wanes.

We also have those elements who are making a lot of money from the climate change argument and I believe that the monetary side of the argument is the major part of it.

But now we read astonishingly that far from global temperatures rising they are actually falling after having remained constant for several years. It also transpires that those collecting the data may have manipulated the data to support their own theories of climate change.

In denying that manipulation has taken place they offer the idea that the data must be correct because it has been subjected to ‘peer review’.

  In other words someone has published a paper and it has been agreed upon by a number of like minded people. That’s a bit like being a supporter of a football team  called ‘United’ and discussing with supporters of the same team which team is the best team. Not surprisingly this ‘peer review’ after a lot of deliberation agrees 100% that ‘United’ is the best team.

I’ve seen this so many times in different fields where data has been changed to match a pet theory. People should be honest and when the data disproves a theory, admit it. You’ll be much more appreciated for it instead of being held in utter contempt.

Nowadays everybody has a mobile phone (or cell phone in the US).

There are so many models to choose from it’s mind boggling. There are so many functions included now that they are in danger of losing their primary function. That of making calls.

Also there are numerous model updates. No sooner have you bought your mobile than it is superseded by a newer model. And, of course you must have it as soon as it comes on the market.

That brings another problem to the surface. The contract. Usually these mobiles are so  expensive that the only way to get one is to take out a contract. These can be 12 or 18 month contracts, or even longer.

This can make a mobile very expensive, indeed sometimes with a cost of 4 or 5 times the original price of the mobile. Of course when the new model comes out you are stuck in your contract. |However you can buy yourself  out of the contract but again that will cost a lot of money.

You’ll also end up with a drawer full of mobiles if you don’t recycle your old mobile. You can give it away or sell it on an online auction, and try and recoup some of your money.

I have to say I’m finding it increasingly difficult to decide whether I dislike Spamhaus more than Spammers. You would think it a no-brainer with Spammer usually being top of the ‘I hate you’ list.

But, the Spammer just usually sends me email which I delete and or ignore. However, in the case of Spamhaus they create lists which ISP’s and hosting companies use to block and stop people sending email.

Unfortunately, as in the PBL database, Spamhaus just drop IP ranges into their databases without even bothering to check if individual IP’s are okay or not.

I’m commenting because it happened to me. One of my server IP’s was in an IP range which was placed into a PBL database. No check was made of course so I had to waste a day rerouting my email and getting the server admins’ to contact Spamhaus to get my IP whitelisted (Spamhaus unusually removed the ability for self-service removal for this PBL range.)

Surely Spamhaus should be blocking those millions of guilty spammers instead of taking the easy route and blocking the poor innocent users who just wants to get on with their lives.

I’ll shed no tears if Spamhaus disappears.

Computers are so fragile. They breakdown and fail as soon as you look at them.

No matter which OS you run on them you’ll find that they are perfectly okay one day and then the next day…nothing.  You didn’t change anything. You even wore the same socks as yesterday. You never even kicked the dog or trod on the cats’ tail. You were nice to your Granny.

The only conclusion is that they are sentient. They know that you need them and that your need is urgent. So they refuse to co-operate. Then when your urgent need for a computer is over you idly press the switch and it swings into life. faster and better than ever.

See they do know. That’s why computers will never make it into vital situations such as flying an aircraft or controlling aircraft movements. Nor will they be found on board spacecraft supplying important data, and, you certainly won’t see them being used in delicate life or death medical operations.

No, they will just be used for their primary purposes of causing annoyance, magnetically attracting dust and giving you something to spend your money on.

Bring back the abacus and the slide-rule.

The long held belief is that dinosaurs were all killed off at the same time by some cataclysmic event like an asteroid hitting the Earth.  This it’s suggested threw up a large dust cloud which blotted out the sun creating a ‘nuclear winter’.  The vegetation died off and the dinosaurs, unable to find food, all succumbed.

Dinosaurs were mostly herbivores and roamed the earth in large groups like the American Bison and modern day cattle.  This gives a clue as to what really happened to them.

Whilst there have been some fossil finds of dinosaur bones I don’t recall hearing of huge groups of dinosaur relics being found in single locations, which if the sudden demise of dinosaurs is to be believed we should expect to see.

It’s more likely that dinosaurs were wiped out by a specific virus.  Much as today we know of viruses that affect single species of plant or animal, a single dinosaur specific virus could have been the reason for the extinction of dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs would have roamed in large herds and with one or two being infected with the ‘dinosaur virus’ the infection would have spread rapidly amongst the herd.   Without a means of treatment dinosaurs would have just died progressively over time.  No sudden wipeout of the dinosaurs but a gradual, albeit at a rapid rate, demise.  This would have accounted for there being no mass ‘graves’ of dinosaurs.  As they became sick they would have slowed down, before dying, whilst the rest of the herd moved on.

Viruses by their very design must have been around since life began.  They cannot just be a manifestation of the modern age, or have started just as mankind developed the ability to identify them.

The extinction of dinosaurs by the ‘dinosaur virus’ is a much plausible cause than the impact of an asteroid which just happened to wipe out one species and leave all the rest intact.

The difference between animals and humans is in the amount of respect shown to each other.

Humans have a long way to go before they can match the respect that animals have for each other.

And, you can read that whichever way you like.