Brian Gongol
It's not the atomic doomsday clock that should worry us
Paul Volcker (who's earned the right to say things like this) says we're running out of time to get the US fiscal situation under control. "The time we have is growing short," says the man who tamed inflation in the Reagan era.
Even tornado-chasers have to drive safely
Poor little Mars Phoenix lander
It's frozen solid on the surface of the Red Planet.
One elaborate visual gag
We've entered an age in which complex gags are much easier to spread around the world than ever before. The Internet makes it possible for someone to lampoon BP and its response to the Gulf oil spill, at zero cost, to a global audience. And the spoof Twitter account has several times as many followers as the real BP public-relations account. That wasn't possible in 1776, or even 1976. Then again, perhaps the preponderance of eye-popping videos and brilliant-but-savage mockery everywhere are numbing us to just how astonishing some things really are. Like a woman giving birth while driving.
MSP feels like a completely different place now that Delta has swallowed Northwest Airlines
When a company like Northwest, which defined the Minneapolis airport for years, is absorbed by another company and loses its identity, it's hard not to get a little strangely nostalgic. Unlike our ancestors, we spend a lot of time with companies and brands, so they help to form our consciousness. Thus, when they go away, it's a loss that has at least a little in common with the death of an acquaintance.
