Brian Gongol
Show notes from the "WHO Radio Wise Guys" - April 5, 2008
EPA to hand over water regulatory authority to Iowa on May 1
Haitians riot over rising food prices
Spray-on coating makes prosthetic teeth work better
RAND study says we aren't ready to make use of genetic information
As genetic screening tools get better and cheaper, we should expect to see them used as a tool for improving health care. But if we don't even know what the tools are or how they work, we're probably not going to use them very well. Even more importantly, if we don't know about them, we aren't going to do a very good job of voting about them.
Individuals' response to stress is partly inherited
Researchers find a chemical that sets off stress alarms in the brain and match it to genes
Western Nebraska hopes for lots of spring runoff from mountains
Prosecutors say eight terrorists planned to blow up seven transatlantic flights in 2006
Now they're in court
If kids aren't paying attention in class, perhaps it's not entirely their fault
The quality of engagement isn't entirely the responsibility of the student -- sometimes lecturers are responsible for their own failures. But not always.
April 2008 EconDirectory update
307 business- and economics-oriented websites, most updated daily or weekly, all in one place
Drug testing appears to put a dent in women's performance at the Olympics
Bernanke defends $30 billion Bear Stearns bailout
Unfortunately, it looks like the deal still leaves the American public on the hook for all of the risk without any serious claim on the benefits if it recovers. All of which, strangely, makes the Columbia Business School's parody video from two years ago seem all the more (unwittingly) prescient. Related: Redesigning British coinage is a job worth about $70,000 in one lump sum.
Gorman-Rupp contest offers a September day of fishing on Lake Erie
Human skin cells plus genetically-stripped cow eggs equal what?
Modified bacteria could trick the immune system into fighting cancer
UK scientists say sunspots definitely aren't causing global warming
Swimmers in new Speedo suit break world records
Safari browser, Adobe Flash Player prove vulnerable points of entry to Apple and Vista laptops
"[T]he federal government is bearing credit risk in extraordinary ways"
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says he thinks the US economy is probably about to start doing better after some credit shocks, but he points out that "a priority for financial policy has to be increases in the level of capital held by financial institutions." He's right about that; banks have been lending out at credit ratios that have probably exceeded what would have been reasonable for the riskiness of what the borrowers were doing. This only goes to confirm the suspicion that the 2008 "economic stimulus package" was really a bank bailout plan masquerading as a way to encourage consumer spending. In reality, the "stimulus" money will end up going to banks as people pay down their debts (which is what the vast majority of Americans did last time around), which makes it a bank re-capitalization program. The risk in all of this is that the people taking unreasonable risks will reap all of the rewards and offload the losses to the American taxpayer. Related: The chair of UBS has quit after losing $19 billion on real estate in the US.
Hippies!
(Video) "Daily Show" reporter expresses out loud what many of us have going through our heads whenever we encounter the mysterious witless creatures of the far left. Truly so hilarious it's a bit painful to watch.
Zimbabwe is kicking Mugabe to the curb
Iowa weather webcam greatest hits
Time-lapse views make it vastly easier to see the atmosphere as a dynamic set of fluids in constant motion than it's normally possible to observe in real time. The public and private sectors in Iowa have been pushing technology hard to make it more useful for weather prediction and real-time observation.
Good news for Cuba: "Absurd prohibitions" lifted
(Article in Spanish) Raul Castro has lifted rules against such basic things as letting Cubans stay in high-class hotels. Laws against the sale of things like microwave ovens (yes, really) are also being lifted.
Why is this Urbandale condo listing at $8,000 under market price?
Maybe because it's so caked in awful hippie/religious paint that no one could possibly imagine living there without a heavy dose of mind-altering drugs.
Iowa father rescues son from well
Google's Gmail April Fool's joke: Back in time
Survey says half of foreclosed properties have "substantial" damage
Not particularly surprising: Once people no longer own their homes, they often feel little or no obligation to care for the property anymore. That's the fundamental rule about private property: People care about the stuff they own, and rarely care as much about the stuff they don't.
Mugabe might finally get booted from office
He's systematically ruined Zimbabwe's economy, leading to massive needless human suffering
Who's going to manage in-state fights over water?
Some people are really slow to take a hint
Fire hits Omaha apartment building. Displaced resident says, "This is my fourth fire, so you kind of get used to it." No, you don't. You move. Speaking of really bad decision-making, it's inadvisable to do a stand-up report at the bottom of a sledding hill.
Show notes from the "Brian Gongol Show" on WHO Radio - March 30, 2008