Gongol.com Archives: October 2005
Brian Gongol



Iowa (10.30.2005)
McLeod USA Back into Bankruptcy

We All Need a Little Humor (10.30.2005)
How Languages Get Lost in Translation
Funny essay by a BBC correspondent who doesn't understand why Germans mix up English idioms, nor why Poles and Russians dub over all English-language programming with a single announcer's voice

Business and Finance (10.30.2005)
US Construction Boom of $25 Trillion Expected in Next 25 Years
Replacing the old and adding plenty of new

Iowa (10.30.2005)
Response to Iowa's #50 Ranking in Entrepreneurship Rankings Get It Half-Right
Iowa Entrepreneur's Coalition head calls for streamlining access to programs and services for small businesses (good), tax credits (not so good), health insurance pools (good), "buy local" laws (not so good), an emphasis on intergenerational transfers of businesses (why?), and pulling the Iowa Values Fund away from big businesses (it needs to go away entirely). Iowa has a lot of potential, but the state's bias in favor of the already-big is no good.

The United States of America (10.30.2005)
Halloween Bans Across the Land
School districts in some places prohibit celebrating the holiday, particularly over religious objections. Best response: "If you show me a United States with no holiday where you can be creatively weird, I will show you a United States with no hope."