Brian Gongol
Gas prices are nothing compared to bottled water
Stop signs with a little something extra attached
A lot of things take on an extra bit of entertainment value when they're moved out of context.
Giving a presentation? Try to go first or last.
Information undoubtedly drives markets, but by how much and how fast?
Recapturing tiny amounts of energy
Art installation tries to recapture tiny amounts of energy from ordinary activities. It's intended to make a point about energy consumption, but if nothing else, it's fun to look at.
Iowa communities want unfunded mandates to end
How the Internet completely upturns the notion of reputation
What will the Air Force of the next 25 years look like?
The USAF has been profoundly successful -- US ground forces simply don't get attacked from the sky, ever -- but as technologies change, so do the major threats
Score one for science
(Video) The Discovery Channel's newest series of promos plays well to encouraging people to appreciate science and technology for their own sake
Superimposed photos of planes at takeoff
100 planes in one shot
Using the market to protect the Amazon rainforests
(Audio) BBC interview with Johann Eliasch, a business owner and environmentalist who says that the best way to protect the rainforests is to make sure they're worth more standing and green than slashed and burned. He's putting his money where his mouth is by buying 400,000 acres of the rainforest himself. It's the same model that the African Wildlife Foundation has been using to keep elephants from being hunted to extinction.
"There are a lot of vulnerable spots in this country"
Extensive report on world food prices
Japanese train-passenger-compressors in action
(Video) One might wonder why they don't just add trains or cars to the existing trains
Investigators think the January BA crash was caused by frozen fuel
The plane passed through extraordinarily cold air over Russia, which they think caused the fuel to thicken, which in turn made it harder to pump -- keeping it from getting to the engines during landing
Mapquest gas-price map
Another example of how the tiny little improvements technology brings to our quality of life accumulate in unexpected ways. We can't control gas prices in general, but it's nice to be able to find local deals without a lot of effort.
Magazine names water systems among most important infrastructure items to fix now
PETA, of all groups, offers an inducement prize
Inducement prizes are a great way to encourage innovations. The prize-giver offers a big sum of money in return for the achievement of some challenge. In this case, the animal-rights group is offering $1,000,000 to whomever can come up with a way to produce meat at reasonable prices without killing an animal to get it. In other words, test-tube steaks. So far, it's possible but outrageously expensive. But in the next few years, it could become a way to produce meat at low cost and minimal environmental impact. Even better, there's some possibility that the meat produced could be engineered to retain a minimum of harmful fats and other things that put human health at risk. Of course, there could be unintended consequences. But in the meantime, it's an intriguing prospect.
Russia and China challenge each other over Central Asian energy
Both countries want access to the oil and natural gas in the center of the continent, and their competing interests are creating a new rivalry. Meanwhile, the Russian gas monopoly may now be the world's third-largest company. Related: A majority of Russians think that wealth can only be had through corruption and political connections. That's bad news.
The same leverage risks that killed LTCM are skunking today's funds, too
Logos from the 1970s
Sioux City considers its water future
New Yorkers try to figure out how to get traffic to slow down
In a way, it's ironic, considering that the goal of transportation engineering is often to get people from one place to another as swiftly as possible. But inasmuch as they're talking about trying to find ways to reduce congestion and humanize the city in the process, it's worth paying attention to. Los Angeles, by comparison, may be hopelessly addicted to sprawl thanks to laws requiring generous parking availability.
Give science a chance
Does the entertainment industry screw up politics?
Politicians of all stripes are regular targets for attack, whether on late-night TV shows or on talk radio. The effects of that are a bit murky. On one hand, we have Teddy Roosevelt's observation that if the people start to assume that all politicians are corrupt, then democracy is lost. But on the other hand, we have a First Amendment in place specifically to guarantee that those outside of politics have sufficient power to keep a check on those who are in politics, and parody and satire have been used for that purpose for centuries. The important question is probably whether there is something fundamentally different about today's lampooning that makes it harmful in a way the old type was not.
Wages in China keep rising, so companies are looking for cheaper workers elsewhere
The spillover is reaching India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, among other places.
Strange ants of unknown origin are eating electronics in Houston
Politics meet computer hacking
Someone took advantage of a security hole in the Obama campaign's website to redirect traffic to the Clinton campaign's site just before the Pennsylvania primary. As candidates rely ever more heavily on the Internet, the need for their campaigns to be security-conscious becomes more important, too.
Long-term planning helps Southwest Airlines save fuel costs
The airline planned ahead and bought large fuel contracts at prices much lower than the same fuel is selling for on the market today, and those contracts will continue through 2012. It just goes to reaffirm the value of planning for risk. On a global scale, there may be evidence that the higher prices being paid for things like oil and grain are part of a large structural shift as the world's poor start to escape poverty.