Brian Gongol
| October 2011 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | ||||||
Des Moines Police bust burlesque show
Thank goodness they've installed automatic traffic-enforcement cameras on I-235 so they now have time to go around looking for toplessness. Because there are certainly no real crimes taking place in this fair city, are there? It's well past time for the Big Brother nonsense to end.
Argument in favor of Facebook building its own Internet browser
They certainly might do it -- but the security-minded had better think twice before adopting it. Facebook is intrusive enough as it is, so letting it become the portal through which all one's Internet use is conducted would be a frightening prospect.
IT departments are learning to give up -- people will use the technology they want
...no matter what company policy might say.
Technological advance means more choices
That doesn't mean we have to use all of the new technologies that come our way, but it's fascinating to see the options that open up. For instance, the video of a 29-year-old hearing herself for the first time upon the startup of her cochlear implant. Those tools aren't for everyone with hearing impairments -- but having them available makes the world much better.
Is currency really all that sacred?
A guy from Omaha suggests that we auction off spaces on our currency to help pay the national debt. On the surface, it's kind of silly. But he's right that novel approaches must be considered if the United States is to get its fiscal affairs in order. And the question here is, how sacred do we really think the currency ought to be? After all, the Federal Reserve notes we all know and recognize (or maybe not, depending on how much they alter new bills) are younger than the Federal Reserve system itself -- about a hundred years. Are they really that sacrosanct?
How to keep Facebook from broadcasting everything you do
The more Facebook tries to be and become for everyone, the creepier it becomes
Who wants to buy Yahoo?
The company is apparently "up for sale" -- it's still publicly-traded, but there's apparently great interest on the part of the board in seeing another firm take over. But no clear front-runner has emerged. Yahoo has just entered an agreement with ABC News for co-distribution of their news products.
"The strongest case for Romney is that he's nobody's idea of a savior."
Maybe the times are right for a President rather like Calvin Coolidge
Can the next-generation biofuels mandate even be met?
The government mandated a few years ago that motorists should be using lots of next-generation biofuels in our cars. But nobody seems to be able to produce those biofuels economically.
In Minnesota, the state can sell leases on your land
State law on mining rights appears to trump the rights of individual property owners. And in an era of tight budgets for state governments and high commodity prices, that's a recipe for making a lot of people (reasonably) angry.
Microlending in Nebraska
It's amazing what just a few thousand dollars can do to change the trajectory of a small business
Protesters continue to gather on Wall Street
The problem with this movement is that they don't seem to understand: If you want to change capitalism, you have to be a capitalist. Do they really think that anyone in the financial industry is going to pay attention to hordes of people who clearly have no interest in participating in the stock market? There's no question that much of the investment-banking industry is a deadweight on society -- their brains would better be used elsewhere, and many are nothing more than rent seekers trying to collect an unreasonable amount of commission off transactions between other parties. But the market isn't going away -- markets are organic and fundamental to human nature. So instead of standing around protesting, it's much better to become a capitalist, then starve the investment-banking industry by voting against it through behavior and shareholder action.
ISU scientist wins Nobel Prize for discovery made in 1982
Doesn't that seem like too much of a delay?
Apple announces the passing of Steve Jobs
How tornado warnings are really issued
The National Weather Service assesses a Minnesota tornado from a couple of years ago that damaged northern suburbs of the Twin Cities with no apparent warning. The assessment highlights exactly why the Weather Service always needs trained spotters to volunteer their efforts -- and why we need more weather radar installations all over the country.
Author says the China bubble is going to pop soon
(Video) It's never possible to accurately forecast the precise timing of the collapse of a bubble. But it should be reasonably clear that the Chinese economy hasn't been built to sustain a long-term growth rate like it's had recently.
A classic case of an unsustainable rise
Apple's market capitalization has been meteoric since the launch of products outside its conventional computer business -- the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. And the stock market has rallied with enthusiasm to the Apple cause. But nothing that the company makes is more than a couple of years from being rendered obsolete by something better. Chasing the fad is going to leave some stockholders in trouble, because there's no way for the company to keep up its current growth in share price over the long term.
Crooks are conducting a phishing scam via phone
If you get a call from an automated voice saying it's "Wells Fargo" calling about a card problem, don't be fooled. It's a scam.
School district in Atlantic, Iowa, loses settlement over forcing girls into strip-search
This Big Brother nonsense has to stop
Pandora removes 40-hour free listening limit
Today is the 9th anniversary of one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in modern times
On this date in 2002, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which contested the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, which creates a right of copyright that extends 70 years past the death of the author of a creative work. There is little to distinguish that length of copyright protection from perpetual protection, which prevents useful works from entering the public domain, where they can be used freely and built upon. The Congress that approved the extension, the President who signed it, and the Supreme Court that upheld the decision should all be ashamed of themselves. They've protected Disney's rights to old Mickey Mouse films at the expense of science, discovery, and progress.
BlackBerry e-mail service outage rolls all over the planet
The service's popularity in the Middle East has been driven by the privacy of its email system, but the system can't handle the traffic and it's causing the system to come apart at the seams
The Baby Boomer retirement wave is starting to get very real
American Airlines is shutting down its pilot base in San Francisco because it just doesn't have the pilots there to justify the investment anymore
Stephen Fry reviews the latest iPhone
He seems to be quite a fan -- except for the way the system is designed to save your photos forever
The Republican Presidential candidates debate economics
Bill Gates can jump desk chairs from a standing position
Someone dredged up nearly 20-year-old footage and stuck it on the Internet for all to enjoy
Maps of the pipelines of the United States
State tells "Occupy Iowa" protesters that they've maxed out their allowable protest time
Groups have a right to assemble, but there has to be a distinction between a protest assembly and a group of people just sitting around occupying public property -- property to which the rest of the public also has a right of access. If they're just assembling in the hope of getting arrested, then that's no longer really "peaceable" assembly, now is it? On a related note, even though the "Occupy ____" movement is rallying around a generally anti-capitalist banner, it turns out that they still understand property rights...at least when it comes to their own property.
Apple releases the iPhone 4S
A concurrent update to Apple's iOS has been blamed for wiping out lots of customer data.
Unix co-creator Dr. Dennis Ritchie has died
Unix is behind the Android and Mac OS operating systems, among others. One developer said, "Ritchie's influence rivals Jobs's; it's just less visible." He's quite right.
Amazon drops price of basic Kindle to $79
The price is valid as long as the customer is willing to accept promotional ads on the screensaver, which seems like a decent trade-off for the $30 price cut
BlackBerry outages spread all over the planet
Though CNN goofed when it noted on its news ticker that "almost every planet" was being affected by the outages. Nobody's using a BlackBerry on Venus. The outage is really, really bad news (and timing) for BlackBerry, which is seeing its market share slip to rivals using Android and the iOS.
Do yourself a favor: Take two minutes for a self-exam today
Take a minute or two and conduct some basic self-screenings for cancer. Early detection saves lives. There's lots of misinformation about cancer that finds its way around the Internet, largely because we've been trained to wait expectantly for some sort of magic-bullet solution to cancer. But cancer risks can be significantly reduced through a balanced diet, exercise, and early detection and treatment. Meanwhile, science is making great progress towards improving genetic detection, which holds great promise for some types of cancer. Instead of forwarding hoax-ridden e-mails about "cancer cures" and false threats, people should instead remind their friends and family to assess their health once a month.
Property rights make sense early
Kids apparently start to understand the concept of property rights at the age of 3, according to this research
The largest bankruptcies in American history
"New decoy website launched to lure away all moronic Internet commenters"
If only this parody from The Onion were true
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871
Sliding scales for capital gains?
Would a sliding scale for capital gains taxes -- very, very high for very, very short terms, down to low for the long term -- change the incentive structure that encourages boom-and-bust cycles? Perhaps.
Perhaps nobody in America gets a better free ride than professional sports team owners
There's talk of giving away the Metrodome for $1 just to keep the Vikings in the Twin Cities
For all the love lavished on Apple, Microsoft is still very strong
"Freakonomics" authors wonder if the United States is underpopulated
Anyone who's been to western Nebraska should find it laughable when people on the East Coast complain about it being too crowded there. There's still lots of room left.
Adobe says it's going to try to stop webcams from spying on people
A computer-science student just figured out that there's been a vulnerability in Adobe's Flash program that can allow crooks to hijack the webcams found on most laptop computers today -- allowing them to spy on people without their consent. It's important to always assume that any webcam you ever see -- on any device, including the cameras on today's cell phones -- could be live and streaming anywhere.
Evidence mounts that there is some kind of global warming -- from whatever source it may come
Danish study says mobile phones don't cause cancer
Facebook could face a European fine for holding on to data they were supposed to erase
The macro-scale factors that could keep America on top in the 21st Century
A lot of people are making hay (politically and otherwise) claiming that we're living in the midst of a catastrophic decline in American influence and power, largely due to the rise of China as an economic force in the world. But there is substantial evidence that the factors that have driven a lot of manufacturing power to China may be ready to shift gears -- or even move into reverse. Wages are rising in China, which is eroding the top-line advantage that the country has had over American manufacturers for a long time. And with other factors -- like shipping costs, reliability problems, and piracy -- all making that "cheap" price look a lot more expensive, there may be plenty of room ahead for American manufacturing to compete on a global scale for quite some time to come. It's easy to forget, amid all the whining about the decline of manufacturing jobs in America, that the workforce here has been moving out of manufacturing since the WWII era -- yet we still make more stuff than any other country in the world.
Interview with one of the great logo designers of all time
Tom Geismar has been responsible for logos like Chase Bank and Mobil. He has some interesting things to say about how some of those great logos came together. Funny thing: It's probably a safe bet that people more closely identify themselves with the logos of their employers than with any other symbol, save perhaps for that of their national flag or that of their religion -- and even then, it's probably a debatable point. Most people spend 40 hours a week at work and an hour or two at their place of worship. This isn't a bad thing -- it's just a sign of how ingrained the entire mechanism of capitalism is within our daily lives.
One year ago today: Hundreds were dying in Haiti due to cholera
It's so easy to forget upon what fragile legs civilization stands. The huge earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010 knocked out normal water supplies to many of the people around Port-au-Prince, and without reliable means of getting safe drinking water, thousands got cholera and hundreds died. Clean drinking water seems so basic and essential that Americans rarely think about it -- nobody gets cholera here. But if our water supplies weren't reliable and safe, we would be spending our time seeking that essential resource instead of, say, watching Netflix or building the next great computer company in someone's basement.
How to destroy civilization in one easy step
Medical professionals are noting a dramatic increase in the number of parents who are withholding vaccinations from their children. That's undoubtedly the result of a very loud and uneducated campaign by anti-vaccination activists. We should be clear on this point: If you really want civilization to collapse, go ahead and promote the anti-vaccination movement. Vaccines have been responsible for tremendous progress in the human condition, and letting people put their children at risk because of half-baked paranoiac theories they picked up from half-wits with no scientific knowledge is the surest way to ensure that innocent children will die for no good reason.
Gallup boss says all the world wants is a 30-hour work week and a stable job
The important question is whether that 30 hours is attractive in its own right for some kind of intrinsic reason, or because it would be 25% less work than most people do today
71% of Iowa's corn has been harvested, and 95% of Iowa's soybeans are in
That's much better than the state's five-year average
Kids should probably know how to read by the time they leave third grade
Really, they should probably know before they leave first grade -- so shouldn't they be held back in school until they can? (And, of course, given the attention and resources they need in order to help them learn how?)
"Occupy Wherever We Want" movement learns it can't build a permanent structure on city property
The Occupists need to learn that public property belongs to the entire public, not just the portion of the public that claims to be speaking on behalf of 99% of the public (which they don't). There are plenty of other frustrating dispatches from the Occupists, as well: They're fighting among themselves over -- wait for it -- money, and there's a bit too much free love taking place out in the open, to which one non-Occupist has responded with a donation of prophylactics, saying, "Just make sure people aren't breeding."
Gingrich: "We [Republicans] don't rely enough on actually knowing things"
He's right, to a degree -- there are a lot of right-of-center loudmouths who substitute talking points for actual thought. Conservatism, as an intellectual heir to classical liberalism, should take pride in thoughtful analysis and considered reflection, not just knee-jerk anti-intellectualism, which is all too often the case among populist "conservatives".
Get the creepiest Halloween mask ever
For the low, low price of $4,000 plus the price of a trip to Japan, a company will make an exact mold of your face to be worn as a mask
Indian girls get rid of a name that literally means "unwanted"
What American Catholics really believe
Hamid Karzai says he'd be on Pakistan's side if it went to war with America
China's painfully high inflation rate
There's a lot of debate about whether it's being measured accurately. Regarless of what yardstick is being used, the rate of inflation is very high -- probably about 10% a year. That's enough to put the pinch of people's savings in a dramatic way.
Bad idea: Cutting the radio portion of the Voice of America
Someone's been fooled into believing that everything that's been done over the airwaves in the past can be done online today -- which utterly neglects the enormous power governments in repressive countries have to trace, track, and roadblock individuals' access to the Internet and the sites that the VOA and others use to spread their messages. This is the problem with people who are unfamiliar with technology becoming the ones who regulate its use.
Vatican think-tank calls for world authority to police capitalism
Patently absurd
Online chat about Berkshire Hathaway
Someone commented that they thought the company might be broken up. There's absolutely zero chance of that happening. Berkshire is in a rare position of being able to self-finance virtually anything it wants, thanks to the dual structure. Self-financing means independence from the credit markets, which means being able to take advantage of great opportunities when companies are cheap and credit is tight (like in 2008). It would be a sign of the apocalypse if Berkshire were to split off the financial and operating companies into two. Berkshire is a unique conglomerate -- it's come together organically, as opposed to the way people tried to cram lots of pieces together to form conglomerates like ITT (which are now spinning themselves back into separate pieces). Berkshire's operations have come together based upon which companies were cheap -- not how they supposedly "synergized" with one another. When conglomerates like ITT break up, they're trying to "unlock shareholder value" -- whereas Buffett thinks the value in Berkshire comes not from synergy, but from having bought good companies at good prices.
Welcome to the Chicago Cubs, Theo Epstein
The unemployment problem is a lack-of-skills problem
The current relatively-high unemployment rate in the United States is very, very closely tied to a shortage of skilled workers. People have been laid-off in declining industries, but they haven't found ways to re-tool themselves to go to work in ascending industries, like health care and skilled trades. Anyone who paints the manufacturing sector, for instance, as "dead" is completely wrong: America's still producing more goods than any other country in the world. But the jobs aren't just the monkey-see-monkey-do jobs that too many people picture when they reflect on the manufacturing jobs of the past. More than ever, manufacturing jobs require specialty skills and technological expertise. Machines do the grunt work; people do the smart things.
People respond to incentives, and the government is creating all the wrong incentives
The President is touting a plan to help people who are "underwater" in their home mortgages get Federal aid to refinance their homes at lower rates. But what about the homeowners who were responsible all along? What about those who looked at overheated real-estate markets and decided not to live there? These programs -- from Cash for Clunkers to this mortgage bailout -- are rewarding people for taking excessive risks or doing other stupid things, and implicitly punishing the responsible. Why should people who bought homes within their means in places that didn't have overheated real-estate markets pay Federal taxes so that the irresponsible could get bailed out for living in places where it should have been patently obvious to anyone that house prices were inexcusably high?
FCC plans to redirect funds from landline phone subsidies to broadband subsidies
The Universal Service Fund is worth $15 billion a year to landline phone services in sparsely-populated areas. They object to a plan to redirect that money into promoting broadband Internet access in underserved areas instead.
Delta pays down job-related loans to Minneapolis
And now local officials worry that's because the company is planning to cut back on the number of people it employs there
Amazon's sales keep rising, but so do their reinvestments in research and development
Here's the problem with being a publicly-traded company: Amazon.com had a huge increase in sales for the third quarter, but because it's investing heavily in things like the forthcoming Kindle Fire, shareholders panicked and dumped the stock upon the news. That's the wrong lesson to teach American businesses. On a related note, a British columnist thinks he knows what makes German businesses more resilient than many British and American ones.
Former Goldman Sachs director could be charged with criminal behavior for passing along company secrets
"Catch-22" author actually enjoyed going to war
Joseph Heller apparently actually enjoyed his time at war, contrary to the experience of his protagonist, Yossarian. Anyone who hasn't read "Catch-22" needs to make a priority of it -- the book is laugh-out-loud funny, and truly brilliant.
What the most innovative culture in history does with its free time
(Video) It sure beats clubbing our neighbors over the head and stealing their stuff
BlackBerry could face class-action lawsuit over outages
The Chicago Cubs offer a lesson in getting rich slowly
After getting tired of more than a century without a World Series win, the Cubs have hired Theo Epstein as the president of baseball operations. He, in turn, has brought in Jed Hoyer to operate as general manager. Hoyer worked with Epstein before, and he said something instructive: "There's no magic formula that I learned in Boston, no 'special sauce.' It comes down to the building blocks of baseball, which are scouting and development." In other words, Hoyer's saying that it's going to take some time and a lot of hard work at the fundamentals. This contrasts markedly with the rather large number of Americans who are obsessed with getting rich quickly -- rather than doing the hard work of getting the fundamentals right, year in and year out. Fundamentals -- whether it's in baseball or investing or anywhere else -- are boring. But they're the only way to really get it right. It's interesting, too, that the baseball news is happening at the same time as billions of dollars are rushing into the stock market, just because things are starting to look a little brighter. The real winners in the stock market are those who bought a while back, when things looked most gloomy.
Sooner or later, the Occupy Wherever-We-Want movement has to tell the rest of us what they believe
Supposedly, there are sub-groups now agitating for a national "general assembly" to put together a statement of purpose. But just like the Tea Party movement, the Occupists are bonded more by generalized anger and frustration than a coherent worldview.
We're about to have 7 billion neighbors
The world's population is expected to reach 7 billion within days. That's many times more people than occupied the planet at, say the time of the American Revolution.
Letting the mortgage market hit bottom: We have to do it sooner or later
Chinese hackers took control of US satellites in 2007 and 2008
While we're busy worrying about the latest situation with the cast of "Jersey Shore", they're getting smarter and bolder
The savings rate is starting to slip
Down to 3.6% last month. It really should be well over 5% -- ideally, somewhere close to 10%
Can a "psychic" prove her supposed powers on Halloween?
If there were any scientific evidence in favor of "psychic" powers, then perhaps. But it's all just falsehood, which in turn steals from the gullible.
What makes "Modern Family" such a good show
Modernization, of a sort
The British throne will soon equally belong to either a son or a daughter of the right people, not just the son. But real modernization would eliminate a monarchy altogether. Republics for all!
Aspirin could have anti-cancer properties for people with Lynch Syndrome