Brian Gongol
Warren Buffett's donation to the Gates Foundation is unusual because it contains a sunset provision -- if the leadership of the foundation changes, he wants the right to make sure that they'll still be doing the right thing with his money. So if sunset provisions are good enough for Warren Buffett, why aren't they good enough for us to impose on most laws?
A hacker has decided that he's so tired of the bugs he finds in web browsers that he's going to release details on a new bug every day this month. It's actually a good tip for the rest of us, whether we're in business for ourselves or work for others -- you get more useful feedback from your honest critics than from your cheerleaders.
North Korea's missile tests have played out much as I recently predicted -- and the bottom line is that the US isn't in a good position. But while there's lots of worry about the long-range missiles that North Korea wants to build, we don't need to worry about that hype as much as we should probably concern ourselves with the short-range missiles that can easily reach South Korea and Japan. Japan is one of our top five trading partners, so anything that happens there has an effect on how we live here.
On a hot day like today, it's worth noting that 15% of all electricity in our part of the country is used for air conditioning, which brings up an interesting question: How much of that energy could be saved cheaply with things like trees and better insulation?