Show Notes from the WHO Radio Wise Guys

The WHO Radio Wise Guys
Brian Gongol

The WHO Radio Wise Guys airs on WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa on 1040 AM or streaming online at WHORadio.com. The show airs from 1 to 2 pm Central Time on Saturday afternoons. A podcast of show highlights is also available. Leave comments and questions on the Wise Guys Facebook page or e-mail them to wiseguys@whoradio.com.

If you haven't gotten the H1N1 vaccine, there still seem to be some places offering it, and it's worth considering. It was a brutal flu (ask anyone who suffered through it, including your humble hosts), and even though the CDC says that the flu is definitely on the decline for the season, it could keep on floating around this year and could very well be back next winter.

One of Twitter's co-founders says he thinks his service is going to become fundamental to democracy. That's a bit of an overstatement, to be sure. Useful, maybe, but definitely not fundamental.

The oldest American lives in Ames. Thinking that 115 years is the maximum to which anyone's living these days makes us wonder whether we can extend that life expectancy for most people. This is doubly important when you consider the distribution of genius: We should have at least 12 people living on Earth today with the same kind of genius as Isaac Newton. How can we make better use of their minds? And wouldn't helping them live longer help the world benefit from their genius longer?

A caller wants to know whether to get a computer using Windows 7 or Windows XP. Unless there's some other overriding reason (like a computer that doesn't have enough room to store Win 7), then it's probably best to go with the most recent operating system available (in this case, Windows 7). It will be supported longer into the future than Windows XP.

Are Zeppelins the future of air travel? They may be pretty, but they're probably not the future of mass air travel. However, it's quite possible to believe that airships could become a form of air travel much like cruise ships -- a luxury for which the selling point is the leisurely pace and the scenery, not the speed.

A listener asked whether a computer can get a viruse from files on a flash drive. The answer: Absolutely, positively, it can. You should always scan incoming files using antivirus software -- whether that file arrives via e-mail, flash drive, SD card, CD, DVD, Internet download, or even a floppy drive.