Gongol.com Archives: May 2017
May 21, 2017
Indefinite ignorance of our budget problem won't make it go away
Budget watchdog group Fix the Debt: "The President is right to focus on job creation and tax reform. But he should not rely on unrealistic and rosy economic growth projections to pay for his proposals or fix our debt. It is not a good idea to spend as if you won the lottery in hopes that you actually do."
It's not the crime, it's the cover-up
McClatchy cites members of Congress: "Investigators into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential elections are now authorized to probe whether White House officials have engaged in a cover-up."
Too many Americans who knew that a free press was a key to winning the Cold War are now quick to share propaganda on their Facebook pages. We need to get smarter, not more entrenched in preconceived notions. Perhaps social media apps shouldn't open until you've been forced to read two pages in a book.
RTNDA statement about attacks on journalists
"Above all, reporters are representatives of the public." Yes.
Montgomery (Ala.) just got more than 8" of rain in 24 hours
There really just aren't civil-works infrastructures designed to handle that kind of water
Why Europe needs to understand China's "Belt-and-Road" concept in a hurry
China is undertaking a big concept: Essentially, that its interests are best served by heavy investment in the infrastructure that will permit it access to markets abroad so it can export more. But the concept isn't just about what China wants to build, but what the nations on the receiving end of the investment decide to do.
Could self-driving electric cars kill the automakers?
One team of futurists estimates that households will save thousands of dollars a year if they start using self-driving cars that are part of fleet services. What's perhaps more interesting is to consider what happens if people continue to own vehicles but (a) simply have a lot more time at their disposal because we waste so much human energy behind the wheel, and (b) save a ton of money because electric cars turn out to be much more reliable than combustion-engine vehicles. Some of the projections in the forecast are far-fetched (recovering "vast tracts of land" seems unlikely), but others could unsettle some of the biggest industries in the economy, including the oil companies.
Norway needs to fix the Doomsday seed vault
Water got in the front entrance, where it wasn't supposed to
