Brian Gongol
When Jay Leno moves on next year, where will he move to?
Leno will be moved out of the Tonight Show next year, and Conan O'Brien moves in. Jimmy Fallon will then take over Conan's spot. Note this: Fallon, Ferguson, and Leno started in stand-up comedy. Letterman was in TV news and (briefly) in talk radio before entering stand-up. O'Brien was a TV writer before anything else. Kimmel and Daly both spent some time in radio. The preponderance of stand-up comedians goes some way towards explaining why there's so much shouting in late-night television. Kimmel is rarely even close to being as loud as Leno. And that probably explains (in part) why nobody's been able to replicate Johnny Carson's dominance; he grew up doing radio and realized that when people are in bed listening to you tell jokes, they don't need you to shout as though they're in a comedy club.
Parts of central Nebraska hit with 11 inches of rain
General rule of thumb: Don't make potentially-offensive ads for companies who don't ask for them
A couple of guys made a fake VW commercial involving a suicide bomber. The Germans were not amused.
Six tornadoes hit Kearney, Nebraska
And as Parkersburg, Iowa, cleans up, cell-phone video of the EF-5 tornado has emerged. The complete destruction caused by the tornado still hasn't been quite enough to take away the locals' sense of humor.
Time-lapse camera captures supercell splitting in half
The rotary traffic signal
Instead of guessing how "stale" a yellow light is, drivers can see precisely how much of each color (red, yellow, and green) is left. At least one reason they fell out of favor appears to be that they couldn't be adjusted to variable traffic flows (which meant that people were stuck waiting for cross-traffic that was never there), but suppose that the same signals were to be changed to LED lights that could be accelerated or decelerated as traffic flows demanded. That seems like a vastly better way of improving traffic flow and preventing red-light running than red-light cameras.
New York Times develops prototype custom-printing newspaper stand
But unless it can print at lightning speed, why would anyone bother? Better to have custom news sent to the desktop in PDF format or something similar. Related: Someone at WGN needs to be fired for their creepy new logo.
A ceiling clock for people who love "24"
Just about anything can be measured, including the durability of one-hit wonders
Stop the presses! San Francisco has a lot of dogs and not many kids!
This shocking news brought to you by the National Geographic. Also shocking: A bad economy is good business for Wal-Mart.
Wastewater troubles on the International Space Station
Iowa politicians continue to spend like there's no tomorrow
Don't I know you from somewhere?
(Video)
Aggressive fungus "has the big potential to destroy right now the major commercial wheat varieties"
That's the assessment of the wise and deeply attentive Norman Borlaug, who has a long history of thinking about the big picture of the world's food supply, even when nobody else does.
Buffett says everything he knows about investing he learned at age 19
That's a slight oversimplification, but it's much like the rest of life: Most of what you know about most things can be distilled to some of the earliest lessons you received on any given topic. And Buffett's earliest lessons came from Benjamin Graham's book, "The Intelligent Investor". Given that book's emphasis on finding real value and looking at investments as pieces of real, active businesses, those lessons could help undo a lot of the harm done of late by people who try to chase random chart nonsense in pursuit of a quick buck.
420,000 homes destroyed by aftershocks in China
The death toll is now officially at more than 67,000. This is further evidence in support of the hypothesis that natural disasters alone aren't necessarily deadly; they are deadly in direct proportion to the poverty of the area they strike. Even very large earthquakes rarely kill large numbers of people in rich countries, but even milder quakes can kill many in poor countries. Between 2000 and 2005, no matter how severe the earthquake, no more than 100 people were killed in any country where the average income was over $10,000 a year. Poverty kills.
At least 67 people sent to hospital by Sunday's tornado
The tornado that did massive damage to Parkersburg, Iowa, sent a large number of people to the hospital, but it should be noted that the tornado, which was rated an EF-5 (the strongest classification possible), happened in an area where a tornado warning had been specifically issued 24 minutes before touchdown. That kind of warning is absolutely essential to saving lives. Meteorology has come a very, very long way in the last few years. It could do even better if the US had a more comprehensive network of Doppler radar installations.
Why do television stations get news helicopters?
Interestingly, KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, which long touted its "NewsCopter 9", doesn't seem to have it anymore
Gorman-Rupp gets approval to expand
If speculators are manipulating oil prices, then they're not especially good at it
A good speculator would've bought contracts on oil at $50 and would be selling it now at $125, undercutting the market price of $130, cornering the market and making a fortune. But nobody seems to have done that. The precise prices of right now may be a little bubble-ish, but the bottom line is that global demand is rising faster than supply is increasing, and higher prices will probably persist indefinitely. The International Energy Agency is pretty sure that we've been overestimating global oil reserves for a while.
The algebra of corporate logos
Parkersburg tornado was at least an EF-3
The large tornado that hit Parkersburg, Iowa, yesterday was one of the strongest the state has seen in some time. The damage left behind is stunning, and reminiscent of tornadoes that hit nearby areas 40 years ago. The first aerial views of the damage in Parkersburg are astonishing.
Corn could be in a little trouble this year
The weather's been unfavorable and some of the corn is having trouble breaking through the soil. Given how much we're depending on corn for ethanol, this could be a bad sign.
85% of all possible IP addresses are already taken
An upgrade to the next generation of IP addresses (IPv6) is pretty much the only way to make sure we don't run out within a couple of years
A lot of "human" characteristics don't appear to be unique anymore
Different groups of animals show signs of culture and morality
Wired Magazine claims more nuclear power plants are the way to go