Brian Gongol
Podcast: Updated weekly in the wee hours of Sunday night/Monday morning. Subscribe on Stitcher, Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or iHeartRadio
A huge number of roads around the state have been closed due to flooding. Fortunately, improvements at Saylorville Dam mean that we may come close to the 1993 flood levels, but we don't have to worry about losing our water again. That said, you should always keep a three-day supply of fresh water in the home. Mason City, on the other hand, has lost the use of its water-treatment plant to flooding.
One of the emerging challenges of the modern era is social isolation, particularly among the elderly. Could pet-like robots be part of the answer? We might also look into using artificial intelligence to send personalized compliments by e-mail.
Universal Studios claims it has backup copies of the 50,000 movies and TV episodes destroyed in the fire the other day. It's funny to think about how much of the ephemera of the Internet today is being lost, simply because no one is really archiving it. But wait...someone is! The flashbacks might scare you. (You might try looking back at old versions of WHORadio.com, for instance.)
The Tiananmen Square massacre happened 19 years ago this week. Will it take another 19 years for the Chinese people to give the Communists the boot? We can hope not.
Why in the world would the bosses at FedEx do away with the Kinko's name? Seems ridiculous.
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Keywords in this show:
animatronic pets •
archives •
artificial intelligence •
backups •
branding •
China •
Communism •
disaster planning •
drinking water •
elderly care •
FedEx •
flooding •
Kinko's •
Mason City •
movies •
natural disasters •
robots •
Saylorville Dam •
social isolation •
television •
Tiananmen Square •
Universal Studios •
water