Brian Gongol
Graphic of the day: Pipeline Attack
Five states had top-ten driest summers this year
Replacement heart valves from your own cells: Available in five years
A British cardiac surgeon thinks we're within three to five years of that development, which means it'll happen within the first term of the next President. The future has always been a mysterious place, but it would be nice to hear any of the candidates actually talk as though they've thought about anything farther ahead than dinner. What's going to happen when artificial life forms become reality? Are the people who want to occupy the White House even pretending to think about these issues?
Bittersweet humor: "Why the 21st Century is making you miserable"
But there are hundreds of reasons to look forward to the future, even if sci-fi often gets it wrong. But in any consideration of the future, we ought to keep in mind just how awful things have been in the past -- like when the Soviet Union cheated its own people out of their life savings.
Further (depressing) analysis of Mexican oil terrorism
Author thinks it could be the opening stage of a catastrophic breakup of the country. That may be too pessimistic, but it's a terrible incident nonetheless.
Crooks have figured out a security hole in MSN Messenger
It involves exploiting a hole in the webcam protocol. Best advice: Don't video-chat with people you don't know in real life. And there's a worm spreading via Skype. Related: September's Patch Tuesday from Microsoft was a little more muted than most of the others this summer.
Russian newborn held hostage by Turkish hospital for $30,000
Turkey averts massive bomb attack on 9/11 anniversary
Jan Mickelson profiled in Los Angeles Times
Mickelson is the mid-morning host on WHO Radio. He gets good fill-in hosts sometimes, too.
Residents of St. Petersburg object to $2.3 billion Gazprom tower
It's planned to be 396 meters (1300 feet) tall, which would make it almost as tall as anything in Chicago
US credit shakedown could put the squeeze on Russian banks
The petroleum boom there has been generating a lot of cash, which in turn has fueled a credit expansion. But when banks in the US tighten credit (by charging higher rates), the cost of capital goes up for other parts of the world as well.
Russian President Putin springs surprise nominee for Prime Minister
Huge earthquake hits Indonesia
It was an 8.2 on the Richter scale, or about one-tenth the strength of the 2004 quake that caused the huge tsunami. This one triggered much more limited tsunamis. It does seem like the Tsunami Warning Center is doing a much better job of issuing warnings than it did in 2004.
