Brian Gongol
Text-message service solves huge problems for poor farmers in India
Using SMS (short message service), the service from Reuters distributes market pricing information and alerts about weather and pests for a very low price. The better their information, the better the chances for the farmers using it to escape from poverty. And it's all thanks to text messages. Of course, as with most technology, SMS can be used for misleading or crooked purposes, too -- as people facing shocking bills for "premium" text services may discover.
China plans to control the weather at the Olympics
They already employ tens of thousands of people using anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers to seed clouds and create rain. Whether it even works is up to question, but they spend almost $100 million a year trying anyway. Besides the weird-science nature of the whole effort, there's also the fact that it's strange to put high-powered weapons into the hands of 30,000-some peasants in a country where there's been a separatist undercurrent for at least a decade seems odd.
Charlie Munger expects 5% returns on stocks
If he's right, that's much, much less than what people have grown accustomed to
Is $2 a month too much to pay for stormwater control?
