Brian Gongol
Is it really a good idea to put mulch on the landscaping next to your house? According to ISU, it's not exactly a special termite risk. Their recommendation is to keep any kind of mulch or landscaping material -- including gravel and rock -- a few inches away from the house foundation. Interesting.
I've broken down and gotten an electric lawn mower. The push-reel mower just wasn't going to make it through the late-fall lawn growth that's survived all winter. Why an electric? Because gas prices definitely aren't going down, and I'm not especially good with maintaining combustion engines.
Gas prices are on the brain right now, especially as China announces its plan to build 97 new airports in the next dozen years. The cost would be enough to buy every lottery ticket in America in a year.
Apple's semi-sneaky distribution of its Safari web browser the other day backfired a bit when a pair of security flaws popped up just after it was released. That tends to put a bad spin on Apple's usually-good reputation for security.
It's long been a point of contention here that junk-food bans in schools are a bad idea. Now we have even more evidence that those bans tend to backfire: A junk-food ban at a California school has led to a black-market boom in the illicit candy trade. It's better to teach kids how to make good health choices (including when it's appropriate to enjoy a reward food) than to just tell them that any food that could be bad for them ought to be banned. On a related note, contrary to the urban legend, Twinkies don't last forever.
Congressional "leaders" have promised that they're going to ignore the funding crises in Social Security and Medicare, despite the latest warning from the trustees that our entitlement programs are going broke.
Even the UN admits that free markets work. That's some great news to remind us that, despite our problems, things are getting better all the time.
A US think tank has recommended that China should build more megacities. That sure doesn't seem like a good idea.
Keywords in this show:
airports •
Apple •
bans •
China •
debt •
entitlement spending •
free markets •
gas prices •
junk food •
landscaping •
lawn mowers •
Medicare •
megacities •
mulch •
Safari •
schools •
security •
Social Security •
termites •
Twinkies •
urbanization