Brian Gongol
Podcast: Updated weekly in the wee hours of Sunday night/Monday morning. Subscribe on Stitcher, Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or iHeartRadio
FEMA is keeping an eye on a volcano in Alaska that seems like it's getting ready to erupt. It's situations like this that worry Brian because we don't have a good global food backup plan.
Speaking of natural disasters, the National Weather Service is offering storm-spotter training right now. Take the training, then call us at WHO Radio to let us know what you see when severe-weather season arrives.
Long overdue: The arrival of the universal cell-phone charger. It'll take until 2012 to arrive, but when it does, what convenience, eh?
Today's submarines are, it turns out, a little too undetectable. A British sub collided with a French sub in the Atlantic Ocean a few days ago.
If you're having trouble with the digital-TV switchover, WHO-TV has a helpful guide to finding the signals. But if you happen to live inside a metal building, then you might have to find a way to get your antenna outside the walls -- because metal buildings act as Faraday cages.
Speaking of local TV, did you know that the TV towers just north of Des Moines at Alleman are just a few feet shy of being the tallest structures in North America? It's true. At 2,000 feet (or 609.6 meters), they're much taller than any of the world's tallest office buildings.
NASA is offering $2 million to whomever can come up with a tether that's 50% stronger than conventional materials. The hope is that super-strong cables can be used to develop a space elevator. The idea is that instead of using rockets and Space Shuttles to get stuff into space and back, we could put a platform in geosynchronous orbit and use it to blast packages back and forth with much greater efficiency. They physics of it all are pretty crazy, but if it works, there's great potential ahead.
There's talk of raising the gas tax in Iowa. Instead of gas taxes, we need to be thinking about moving to a per-mile tax, but it has to be done in a way that doesn't invade privacy.
A German company is coming out with a Mac clone. Obviously, Apple isn't happy. Maybe they could cheer up with some toast from a VHS. Really.
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Keywords in this show:
Alaska •
Apple •
cell phones •
chargers •
computers •
digital television (DTV) •
Faraday cages •
FEMA •
food •
food stockpiles •
gas taxes •
inducement prizes •
innovation •
National Weather Service •
Mac clones •
NASA •
space elevator •
Space Shuttle •
storm spotting •
submarines •
television towers •
tethers •
volcanoes