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Watch a "psychic" fail
(Video) Anchor Larry Potash calls her out: "You know what? You failed!" The "psychic" responds by accusing him of not being very nice.

A report on yesterday's severe weather in Iowa

More surcharges may be forthcoming
Especially with new costs coming for things like mandated health care



Wall Street Journal says Yahoo will buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion
That's a lot of cash, no matter who you are. But it could be a bold move by Yahoo to inflate its relevance. Tumblr is in a category that also includes Instagram -- sites that depend upon users sharing with one another, very much in a "social" way, but not in a manner that directly competes with Facebook. Tumblr counts on rapid-fire posts, sharing, and re-sharing of uncounted sources and types of content. Everyone seems to want to control the "next Facebook", but Tumblr and Instagram (which was purchased by Facebook last year) might just be the logical successors to Facebook, without actually looking much like Facebook. Yahoo, meanwhile, is about as seasoned (read: old) as an Internet company gets. Under CEO Marissa Mayer, they seem to be adopting the conglomerate model for an online company -- putting together a porfolio of services under one ownership umbrella, without actually integrating those services together, and they're treating their properties somewhat independently. For their flagship Yahoo page, they're reaching out to integrate services from other companies (like Twitter) into what they do. What's funny about that move is that many stock traders and investors actually discount the value of conventional conglomerates and pay less for them. It's not a rational thing to do of course, but the "conglomerate discount" is a widely-known phenomenon. Yet, moving from the bricks-and-mortar world into the online world, people seem to shift from discounting conglomerates to valuing them more.

Interactive map of Iowa tornadoes since 1950



Remember: China is still a developing nation
People too often use "developing" nation as a euphemism for "poor". China, it should be remembered, is widely recognized as the world's second-largest economy, but with four times the population of the United States, its people are much less well-off on average. And in the course of "development", the country will have to deal with its Communist government and its restrictions on things from land ownership to speech, as well as a host of issues related to the quality of life. In the meantime, Americans will have to figure out how to navigate the inflow of investment capital from China as this country remains one of the best places in the world to invest.

EU accuses Huawei and ZTE of "dumping" on the European phone market

Microsoft adds Google chat service to Outlook.com
An interesting move by Microsoft to integrate services from a competitor

BBC documentary examines the "Quiverful" movement

A long-form essay on radio today



This week in trends, tips, and technology

Iowa State Patrol gets Humvees for the next winter storm

San Francisco residents don't love their bacon enough

Still growing, but more slowly
Signals from the East Coast hint that the US economy may not be growing very quickly at all. The President, meanwhile, is trying to shift attention away from the scandals of the week and is using the "jobs" refrain as the means to try. What he ignores, willfully or otherwise, is that the private sector has a lot of people who distrust his motives and his moves alike. The budget proposal to cap tax-advantaged retirement savings at $3.4 million was just one example why he doesn't have that trust he needs: A limit like that just tells people not to save or invest. He can make all the speeches he wants, but when his policy proposals tell investors that their services aren't needed or wanted here, they're going to hold back.

Just try explaining the political abuses of the last week



Damage mitigation makes sense
Former Obama administration official Peter Orszag concludes that it's probably time to start looking at ways of making urban life more resilient to things like heavy rainfall and other dynamic weather patterns. His essay expresses frustration that "we seem to lack the will to reduce this threat by cutting greenhouse-gas emissions", but concludes that something can be done about mitigating the consequences. That's a conclusion that may well have been informed by Bjorn Lomborg, who has long argued that (a) there are likely to be climate changes ahead, (b) we humans may or may not be ultimately responsible, and (c) even if we are responsible for it, even the most drastic cuts to things like carbon-dioxide emissions are likely to make life terribly miserable without really reversing the effects of climate changes already underway. Lomborg makes a strong case for focusing our energy and resources on addressing problems that we know with a high degree of confidence that we can solve, rather than on speculative and massively costly efforts to reverse the warming of the global climate. His group concluded that $75 billion spent wisely could massively improve human happiness worldwide.

Al Gore probably is about as wealthy as Mitt Romney
Gore got wealthy mainly after leaving office. His connections have kept him well-fed.

Some good news: 356 days without a tornado
That's the longest spell without a tornado in recorded history in Iowa. But we can't help but feel sympathy for the people of Texas, who had 12 tornadoes, including at least one EF-4 yesterday.

The Great Plains during the Colorado gold rush
A great map showing Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado during the gold rush. This is how the Great Plains looked during the Civil War.

Scientists find 1.5-billion-year-old water source a mile and a half under Canada
They think it's gone untouched by the rest of the environment for that incredible length of time, and they're trying to figure out if it contains anything living. If it does, that could hint at ways we should look for (and at) possible forms of life on Mars.

What does it mean to be a publisher?
The main writer behind a Chicago Cubs-related website posts a mea-culpa after relaying some rumors that he turned out to regret. He notes that since his site has evolved from a one-man blog into a much more significant operation, "I can -- and will -- still write 'differently' about the Cubs than traditional media, but I've got to stop thinking of myself as operating in an insular bubble." He deserves credit for recognizing that digital publishing still carries responsibilities, even if those words never make it to paper or the regulated airwaves. It's a lesson a lot of people have to learn, especially now that it's possible to publish to the entire world from a smartphone (possibly while drunk). As Charlie Munger put it at the 2013 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, "I think there's a time when your ignorance and folly ought to be hidden".

The threat to several species in Africa is great

Will the indignation at White House behavior grow?



Dwolla gets cut off from Bitcoin
The Federal government has stepped in to stop money-transfer service Dwolla from exchanging any of the "virtual" currency called Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a strange thing -- a private currency with no government and no real management, just a pre-programmed rate of creation and a highly anarchical exchange system. Dwolla probably didn't do anything wrong, but it seems quite likely that someone using Bitcoin did, and it's possible that the government wanted Dwolla (and possibly others) to stop touching it while something fishy is being investigated.

Omaha's mayoral office goes Republican

More US children are being born to unwed mothers
35% in Iowa in 2009, about the same as the national figure.

Oregon researchers say they've developed a cloned embryo to the 150-cell stage



This thing we call a "free press"
The Associated Press is a corporation -- a cooperative, non-profit corporation, but a corporation nonetheless. It is owned by its member newspapers, radio stations, and television stations. The reporters and editors who report for the AP do so in America with the protection of the First Amendment, which applies to the individual reporters -- but also to the organization itself. Why? Because the corporation, ultimately, is made of people -- the people working for it, and the people who own the companies that own the AP. Like it or not, the Citizens United ruling struck down certain campaign expenditures because "certain disfavored associations of citizens -- those that have taken on the corporate form -- are penalized for engaging in the same political speech" as individuals and unincorporated groups. So, for as much as it was popular to jump on the bandwagon that criticized Mitt Romney for saying that "corporations are people", he was right: Corporations are made up of people, and those people do not give up their rights just because they decide to associate with one another. It may, however, take a case like this in which there is near-universal revulsion at the government's behavior for people to see the context.

Is musical talent a depleting asset?
Specifically, music-writing talent, particularly for popular audiences



If it looks and smells like government overstepping its powers...
...then there's probably a good chance it really did. The Associated Press says the Justice Department secretly took two months' worth of their phone records. The AP calls it "a serious interference with AP's constitutional rights to gather and report the news". From what has been reported thus far, they appear to be absolutely right. And it should also be noted that this is exactly why people are wrong when they repeat the tired (and incorrect) refrain that "corporations aren't people". The AP is a corporation -- a cooperative, technically, but a corporation nonetheless -- that exercises the same legal rights to report the news under the auspices of the First Amendment as the individuals who work for the corporation. If the corporation (as a "body" of people) doesn't retain the same Constitutional rights as the journalists individually, then how could we really enforce those Constitutional rights for us all? This particular instance, at least, appears to illustrate exactly why it's silly to dismiss the understanding that corporations really are (made up of) people. And it should also be a case to give us all a serious case of concern about how open and transparent the Federal government really is.

Iowa's farmers have 15% of the corn crop planted
This time last year, they had 86% of it in the ground. That's how cold and wet conditions have been.

Payphones, remembered

How smart are dogs, really?

Strangely, we've had practically no tornadoes in a year
Iowa and Nebraska have been virtually tornado-free. That's not normal at all.

Listen more
Paul Bennett: "For most of my twenties I assumed that the world was more interested in me than I was in it, so I spent most of my time talking, usually in a quite uninformed way, about whatever I thought, rushing to be clever, thinking about what I was going to say to someone rather than listening to what they were saying to me." Sounds like a profound statement to the Twitter and Facebook age.


Google versus the newspaper ad

Seth Meyers gets "Late Night" when Fallon takes over for Leno



This week in making money and having fun
Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio for May 12, 2013

This week in trends, tips, and technology
Notes from the WHO Radio Wise Guys show on May 11, 2013



May 12 to May 18, 2013
May 5 to May 11, 2013
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April 21 to April 27, 2013
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February 3 to February 9, 2013
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January 1 to January 5, 2013

Fourth quarter 2012
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Second quarter 2012
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