Brian Gongol
Unfortunately, the age of speculation is back
So many people want to get their hands onto some Facebook stock that the SEC may soon force the company to start reporting its financial details -- at which point, it'll probably just go public. It's the Dot-Com Bubble all over again! If only one thing should have been learned from the late 1990s, it is that speculative bubbles surrounding online services and websites never last long, because consumers are too fickle to stick with any site forever.
Butt-dialing into a hostage situation
A man accidentally called his wife by bumping into his phone while it was in a pocket. He was listening to gangster rap. She thought the garbled voices sounded menacing and called the police, thinking a hostage situation was underway at the school where he works. Three hours later, the SWAT team figured out they'd just gotten a very expensive and unexpected training simulation.
Should the Valley High School barn be saved?
A lot of people want to hold on to an old barn on the property of Valley High School in West Des Moines, but do they really want to pay to have it made safe and useful? One of the great things about America is that we know when it's time to tear down something old and replace it with something new. Maybe that's what should happen to the barn, and maybe it's not. But that decision should be made by rationally evaluating the costs and benefits of keeping the old building around.
