Brian Gongol
Graphic of the day: Pickpocket
The brain instinctively prefers anticipated rewards to actual rewards
Friday's rains were especially heavy in Des Moines
$153-million-a-year CEO is "picking the pockets of shareholders"
Analysts think California jihadist is behind latest Al Qaeda video
Some amateur analysts think that the video is a complete hoax. Whether that's fanciful thinking or insight heretofore missing from the discussion remains up to question. The language of the video certainly sounds bizarre enough.
Sen. Hagel will retire and says he's not running for President
FBI surveillance went beyond what we were told
Sadly, it's not surprising. Data-mining tools are treated too much as panacaea because they look sophisticated, even though the best intelligence we've gathered on domestic terrorism appears to have come most often from good people who were paying attention to suspicious behavior and plain old-fashioned infiltration of terrorist groups.
Major Colombian drug lord captured
(Article in Spanish)
Higher frequency of hurricanes since 1995 is just a return to normal
Florida State professor says that the frequency of colossal storms dipped from the historical norm during the mid-1900s, and the recent uptick in big storms is really just a reversion to the mean...which implies that the massive overbuilding on America's coasts is going to become even more expensive over time.
Human snowbirds aren't the only ones migrating south for the winter
Pemex says middle-of-the-night explosions were terrorist attacks
(Article in Spanish) 12,000 people have been evacuated in different parts of the state of Veracruz in the wake of six different explosions inside the pipeline network
Claudia Schiffer says supermodels "don't exist any more"
Buffalo Bills tight end may be paralyzed
That's possibly the scariest part about the NFL: The serious and debilitating injuries that seem to be par for the course
Thanks for stopping by, now please go back to Saudi Arabia
Pakistan deports exiled former prime minister after just a couple of hours in the country. He returned in order to give some credibility to his announced plans to oppose Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a military coup. The notion of a coup is a really fascinating one, particularly to those who live in stable democracies. It's almost surreal to hear a Thai leader saying, "You cannot stage a coup just because you are annoyed." Yet, that's what happens in some places where the peaceful transfer of authority isn't guaranteed by domestic institutions. Even legitimately-elected governments in places that are still new to free and fair elections, like Zambia, can have trouble keeping the people happy, particularly while they try to push hard for desperately-needed economic growth.
