Brian Gongol
Show notes from the WHO Radio Wise Guys - March 8, 2008
Why we should expect to see Mike Huckabee back again
A caustic (but generally accurate) look at the bills that survived Iowa's funnel week
There's a great deal of enthusiasm among some members of the Iowa Legislature for some big expansions in government spending and regulation, as though that's what we really need right now.
Just about anything Charlie Munger has ever said that's found its way online
Munger's close pal, Warren Buffett, is the richest man in the world
What's the best newspaper redesign in the last year?
Are we really prepared for flooding?
"Let's drop the pretense that [trade protectionism laws] restore 'justice' or 'fairness.'"
Free trade might not be perfect, but most of the things people try to do to stop it are much, much worse.
Don't accept any wooden nickels
How embedded processors, available at an affordable cost today, can be used to spy on you when you don't even know it. This is the kind of technology that the next President will need to know about, and yet at least two of the candidates are talking about trying to do away with NAFTA, as though trade were a bad thing. It's time to get with the 21st Century and realize that technology is going to change everything all the time.
Japanese researchers confirm the bullwhip effect that causes inexplicable traffic jams
They had a bunch of cars move around a single-lane track at a specified speed, but minor variations in speeds and car-to-car distances accumulated until a rolling dead stop emerged in the traffic. This apparently had never been re-created in a practical, observable environment before -- even though the principle itself is completely understandable. It's the very same effect as that of a bullwhip: When you crack a whip, a very slight change at one end (near your wrist) becomes magnified many times over until it's enough to break the sound barrier at the other end. This is exactly why emergency evacuations by automobile turn out to be such complete messes. The problem can be overcome, of course -- but if this is only the first time we've ever really observed the problem in a scientific setting, it's no wonder we're still doing it all wrong.
Updated version of the Internet-as-Tokyo-subway-map
The Catch-22 to wastewater treatment in rural areas
In case you wanted to know what the airliner cabin chimes meant
Obama Girl has nothing on the Putin Girls
(Video) Vladimir Putin as a sex symbol? It's a pop song and video with remixes. Oy. There's some serious hero-worship going on. Related: Someone needs to tell the Germans they're not allowed to rap to "More Than a Feeling".
Should young employees be allowed to use social-networking sites at work?
One observer says that if you cut people off from their social-networking sites (like Facebook at the office, you're cutting them off from "trusted networks," which in turn makes them less-valuable employees. That might be a stretch.
Business Week writer says Boeing lost tanker deal fair and square
On a totally different aviation note, it's still not known what caused that British Airways flight to crash in London in January. The official British air-safety investigation couldn't find a clear cause for the engine failure which led to the crash, thought it did identify a problem with the instructions for shutting down the plane in the event of a crash.
Lewis and Clark water project will take at least another decade
Russian Google employees have far too much free time
(Video)
Berkshire Hathaway's annual report is out
Warren Buffett says he's identified four prospective successors, and it's overall a very happy report, though Buffett tries to minimize expectations about future success
What we can learn from voluntary participation in distributed computing
Google ad clicks are down over three months ago
But is that really reason to panic? Probably not. However, Google's stock still looks wildly over-priced, selling for 33 times earnings and still offering no dividends.
Futurist says today's environmental laws may do more harm than good
Mostly, Ian Pearson says he's concerned that the old-school rules will look ridiculous and have counter-productive effects as new technologies change the way we do things. And that's a good point: Too often, laws based upon state-of-the-art technology end up becoming either archaic or downright harmful in the future.
New leader in the race for the Netflix Prize: A psychologist
Netflix is offering an inducement prize to anyone who can come up with a computer algorithm that does a better job of recommending movies than its current system. While most of the leading teams are made up of computer experts, one of the highest-ranking newcomers is a psychologist. The success of the competing teams thus far (they've made substantial improvements upon the existing algorithm, though nobody's improved it by 10% quite yet) tells us at least two important things. One, inducement prizes work. Two, lots of people with lots of brainpower are willing to devote their free time to interesting challenges, if only they're given reason enough to do so. Which is why we really need a Wikipedia/Sourceforge hybrid for real research.
Pentagon annual report says China is as big a military threat as ever
And, most importantly, they're actively using cybercrime skills to their advantage. It's easy to conduct a cold war against the West when you're a country with huge numbers of computer engineers and no qualms about abusing intellectual property -- or really any property, for that matter.
Cattle groups oppose expanded Clean Water Act
Show notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - March 2, 2008
EconDirectory update for March 2008
More than 300 frequently-updated websites in the world of business and economics are included
US Air Force tosses Airbus a $35 billion tanker deal
Boeing also put in a bid for the job and will assuredly protest. The tankers will be started in Europe as A330's and finished in Alabama as tankers
Medvedev wins Russian presidency with 70% of vote
Whether that was a free and fair election is another matter altogether -- it wasn't
Ben Stein worries that taxes are going to rise
And there's a good chance of it happening, given the nation's extraordinary obligations and our continued failure to pay for them or to impose any sort of controls on costs