Brian Gongol
If GM files for bankruptcy, it's out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
The DJIA is a terrible tool for measuring the health of the economy, anyway. If one wants to really get a reasonable understanding of how the nation's large businesses are doing, one turns to the S&P 500 Index or the Russell 2000. But the very thought that the Federal government is likely to end up owning 72.5% of General Motors is enough to make even the looniest fiction sound plausible. It didn't have to turn out this way, and certainly would not have, if GM had built a 100-year business plan. A company that doesn't know the biggest threats to its ongoing existence -- and one that fails to try to pre-empt those threats -- really shouldn't be called a "going concern." Unfortunately, long-standing auto dealerships aren't the only ones finding themsleves left out in the cold. Their experience may only serve to warn other firms to ask, "What's the worst thing that could happen to us?" -- and then to do something about it. The worst may be surprisingly possible.
Microsoft attempts to shake iPod dominance with a new Zune
Much bigger, though, than any individual product in the personal-media industry is the way that people are beginning to interact with some of their devices. The telephone, for instance, was a thing that hung on a wall or sat on a desk until just fifteen or twenty years ago. Today, it's more often portable than wired into anything, and it delivers 24-hour access to virtually unlimited sources of multimedia entertainment. And the text message, which is quick like a telegram but thousands of times more ubiquitous than its predecessor ever was, occupies a measurable portion of the average teenager's day.
Synesthesia for all!
At last, researchers have shown that people across the population experience cross-sensory feelings -- sounds that have tastes, or colors that "feel" like something.
State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy says things are looking up
It's a depression...a tropical one, that is
