Problems with FEMA trailers cause new headaches in Cedar Rapids
The emergency housing, which turned out to be a colossal source of hassle for people trying to get back to normal life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, are now turning into a source of hassle in Cedar Rapids as well. It's been argued that we get into these problems because we don't reward imagination well enough anymore. It could also be argued that we're too fixated on short-term solutions -- like trailers which are intended for future removal -- rather than on permanent solutions that may be more modest to start with but are intended to provide a long-term solution, like Katrina Cottages. The concept has been around for over two years, and yet it doeesn't sound like it's the method of choice for getting people in Cedar Rapids back to their home turf. Related: The National Weather Service has some extensive notes on how the Parkersburg tornado and this summer's flooding looked from their standpoint.

Babies on a TV tower
It doesn't seem to take a lot to turn the mundane -- like a TV tower -- into something much more aesthetically appealing

Charlie Munger disassembles what made Coca-Cola a brilliant investment

Michael Bay's rejected script for the latest Batman film
Bay produced "Pearl Harbor" and "Armageddon". There's a formula at work, and a satirist with a good sense of humor decided to take a swing at it.

Tropical storm makes its way up the Atlantic coast



Fake news headlines make spam look important
People need to remain ever-vigilant about what they choose to open in their e-mail inboxes, particularly as the incentives to hawk fake pharmaceuticals and pornography decline and the incentives to spread viruses that enable identity theft increase.

Flight attendant gets free ticket to space from a Kit Kat wrapper
Nestle decided to give away a ticket on board one of the soon-to-launch private spacecraft in the style of Willy Wonka. Surrealism of the whole life-imitating-art thing aside, it's doubtful that most people have yet digested the reality that private-sector spaceflight is a matter of months from becoming reality.

Olympic swimmer benefits from early detection of testicular cancer
Early detection saves lives. That's why everyone should self-examine for cancer at least once a month.

Overdependence on satellite navigation gets trucks stuck in the UK




When the Showbiz Pizza animatronic band performs Usher, nightmares inevitably follow
(Video) Possibly at once one of the funniest things anyone has done this year...and one of the most disturbing.

Forbes catalogues the best-paying blue-collar jobs in America
Let it be noted that even these "blue-collar" jobs mainly involve a high degree of technical sophistication. That's the mark of an advanced society. Unfortunately, a lot of economic populists talk of "manufacturing jobs" as though Americans can get wealthy working low-skill factory line jobs like Laverne and Shirley. The reality is that there is lots of money to be made in all parts of the economy -- including in manufacturing -- but only by those who are willing and able to learn enough to differentiate themselves from those who just want to exist in a certain space and time for a set number of hours a day. Robots can perform many of those chores, and increasingly do. Humans are needed where creativity and mental power are required -- blue-collar, white-collar, pink-collar, and green-collar situations alike. But the days of rote work leading to a satisfying lifestyle are quite over.

Colorado rancher finds albino eagle



Cell phones become closed-circuit TV cameras
Researchers playing around with Bluetooth-enabled cell phones found ways to make them communicate with one another as if they were a closed-circuit surveillance camera system. For now, it's experimental stuff...but a future can easily be imagined in which camera-enabled phones could be voluntarily (or involuntarily) activated and the resulting data gathered and analyzed to determine, for example, the location of a particular hazard on a subway or in a crowded stadium. This is the sort of technological change for which our lawmakers ought to be prepared. Mobile phones are practically ubiquitous -- they're even being used in student-achievement incentive packages in some schools -- and it's almost impossible to imagine a world in which someone isn't aggressively trying to do something with the data they can collect.

Newspapers are shrinking because paper is getting expensive
One-year increases of almost 25% on average are enough to have a lot of papers scaling back. Add on how much the distribution costs are hitting them in a time of higher gas prices, and the real crunch may be yet to come.

Seeing double
Improv group puts identical twins in identical clothes on two sides of a subway car. Hilarious.

We complain about gas prices, but many of our fellow Earthlings pay a lot more
Gas may be at $4 to $5 a gallon in the US, but it's about twice that price in London and Rome. Energy is the lifeblood of a modern economy, and a modern economy is the only way to ensure that standards of living keep rising for our children and grandchildren (not to mention for ourselves). The US ought to pursue an aggressive policy of offering inducement prizes for energy research, as recently embraced by John McCain. The prizes need to be gigantic, and the objectives need to be bold. But innovation is going to be driven by greed -- cold, hard cash -- far faster than it'll be driven by wishful thinking or absurd government mandates. Government-set automotive fuel-efficiency standards have been around since 1975, and virtually nothing useful has come of them. Americans ignored fuel efficiency until gas prices started rising enough to really pinch the pocketbook. Just as rising costs create pain and induce action, so do rising rewards spark interest and research. As so succinctly put by Greg Mankiw, "People respond to incentives." That's what made places like Tulsa and Dallas boom towns during the heyday of domestic oil production -- people were responding to the demand. But the real trick is how well a city (or a state) can keep itself together after the boom reaches its inevitable end. Tulsa looks pretty today, but it probably wouldn't mind having the boom back. Iowa, meanwhile, is experiencing a biofuels boom now...but it won't last forever.



Wrestler backflips into a victory
(Video) Impressive even to non-sports fans. It should be noted, though, that the move was incredibly dangerous, since the back-flipping wrestler could've easily been fallen upon.

Buffett says selling a business to Berkshire Hathaway is like putting it into a museum
He contrasts that with selling to a private-equity firm, which he compares to giving it to a porn shop. Obviously, he has a vested interest in spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about his competitors. But there's an underlying point to his comments that makes sense: Is a business just something to be bought and sold like a pack of baseball cards, or is it something with a deeper meaning to those who own it, buy from it, and work within it? If there is no intrinsic value to the business as an entity to itself, then that calls into question the whole nature of the accounting concept of a "going concern." After all, if there's no particular reason to show up in the morning other than to see who else might be offering to buy the business today, then ownership seems a lot more like rental.

No dancing? No!

Another sign of how life has improved in the last 25 years
(Video) Try getting through an early-1980s promo for a local newscast in Washington DC. Or try gagging through a similar promo from New York City in the same era. Style...graphics...video quality...egads.

Data visualization of American flight patterns
(Video) Related: United Airlines has joined American in charging extra for all checked baggage.

Remember bird flu? It's still out there.
On one hand, a UN group thinks we're past the peak of avian influenza. But on the other, Hong Kong just got over another major scare, and there appears to have been some kind of human-to-human transmission earlier this year. Meanwhile, at least some places are still making preparations, just in case.



Hidden liabilities: The government may be on the hook if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac get into trouble

Jesse Ventura may want back into politics
He plans an announcement on running for the Senate seat from Minnesota this evening

Boards approve sale of Anheuser-Busch to Belgian brewery
InBev offered $52 billion (of which $45 billion is debt financing) for the company. Those who are disappointed by the sale (a group which includes many in the St. Louis area, which saw hometown airline TWA wither after its acquisition by American Airlines) might be asked why they didn't mount a buyout plan of their own. If the answer is that it is too difficult for groups other than existing large corporations to mount such efforts, then that's something we need to address as a country. If, on the other hand, the new owners are really "thinking about the next 100 years", then the buyout ought to be good news for the company. Independence only comes to those willing to take the risk of owning the capital, and the Busch family only owns about 4% of the company today. It had been in the family since 1860.

How not to cover a major news event
Former newspaper reporter has some harsh criticism for how the Omaha World-Herald handled the shootings last December



Notes from the Brian Gongol Show - July 13, 2008
Including big trouble at the mortgage lenders...breakaway movements in China...and working for a million dollars a year

Singing puppies to sleep
(Video) Even if cute isn't your thing, it's still cute. It's almost terminally cute.



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