Brian Gongol
Show notes from the WHO Radio Wise Guys - June 7, 2008
Covering topics ranging from Teddy Roosevelt to the Geo Metro, and from CraigsList to a browser for autistic children. Plus, there's a podcast of show highlights.
Iowa DNR considers new rules for wastewater bypasses
Hallmark's hilarious MC Hammer commercial
(Video)
Universal Studios fire destroyed up to 50,000 movies and TV episodes
Supposedly, copies of most are kept somewhere else. But that seems unlikely -- a huge number of films have gone missing mainly due to neglect and poor archival practices over the years. It's hard to imagine how much of what has appeared on the Internet will be considered "missing" someday, mainly because of site rot and link rot.
Weather radio goes out in Des Moines
Someone cut a cable -- and at an awful time. The weather has been completely out of sorts in Iowa lately.
Who knew that apes couldn't swear?
(Video) Outtakes from "Spinal Tap"
Proposed rule would allow golf-course irrigation with recycled wastewater
To a dear upstairs neighbor
We already have the joke-a-day; what about the compliment-a-day?
The idea isn't a joke. We already look to the Internet for daily doses of humor in the form of comic strips and joke-of-the-day widgets. And with social isolation emerging as a serious risk to the mental health of many people -- especially the elderly -- then why wouldn't we think seriously about delivering daily compliments to individuals via the Internet? The evolution of artificial intelligence should make this extremely plausible in the near-term future, especially considering a daily-compliment generator wouldn't even have to pass a Turing test. It would only have to be good enough to absorb and parse some of the information readily available about an individual (and in the era of Facebook, what isn't available?) in order to generate a daily affirmation. Considering that responsive pet-like robots are already being developed, the notion is hardly outlandish. Besides, people already develop irrationally close psychological bonds with radio and television personalities -- consider, for instance, the number of people who thought of Johnny Carson as a bedroom guest every night -- so why would we not think that a computer could be made to surrogate for esteem-enhancing interpersonal relationships?
Secretary of Defense fires USAF bosses
Gates takes accountability to the top after Minot Air Force Base flunks a test of nuclear-weapon security. It would be nice to see accountability in the public sector taken this seriously more often.
This is already the deadliest tornado season in a decade
And the peak doesn't arrive in Iowa until this month
Gorilla gourmet
Iowa WPCA asks EPA to reject tougher nitrogen standards
Remember Tiananmen Square
An unknown number of Chinese civilians -- hundreds or perhaps thousands -- died trying to win their natural human rights in June 1989
Tough love from the World's Worst Grandpa
Highlights of Saturday's Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field
Look for the guy in the bleachers wearing the blue t-shirt in the second row, next to the shirtless guys
Justice should be swift
Police arrested a man whom they think was looting in Parkersburg. If he really was looting, then he ought to spend a long, long time in jail.
Minot Air Force Base fails nuclear-bomb safety test
The death of the Passionsaurus
Remarkable video of the Parkersburg tornado
KCRG has video of a home being hit directly, and the AP has interior video of a bank being hit. The National Weather Service has extensively documented the remarkable storm. Another remarkable incident happened with a series of tornadoes in Kearney, Nebraska, the other day.
Letter to the editor calls for a mass exodus from Cook County
Suburban Chicago residents are getting tired of being taxed to the gills by a county government that seems to have little respect for budgetary responsibility. It's a good argument against city-county mergers, a subject covered in one chapter of Ten Big Answers You Won't Get from a Politician. It seems generally inevitable that the farther politicians become removed from direct responsibility for their actions, the less prudent their behavior.
Mapping the accents of the United Kingdom
A very informative website by the British Library illustrates how different parts of the homeland of the mother tongue pronounce things in wildly different ways
Why we need Vitamin C
And how figuring out how it affects the body could determine whether people could live much, much longer lives. Apparently, research being done on Vitamin C at UCLA right now is the first ever to really delve into how it works.
Heavy storms soak Iowa, leaving behind flash flooding
Coronal mass ejection on the Sun: One billion tons of gas flaring out in a cartwheel
FedEx fools to drop the Kinko's name
All Kinko's locations will now be known as "FedEx Office". It's an idiotic move for a couple of reasons. First, when FedEx bought Kinko's for $2.4 billion, it was partially paying for the brand equity in the Kinko's name. They immediately started frittering that away by embarking on a $20 million re-branding campaign to tack the FedEx name onto the existing locations. But beyond that, they're damaging two valuable brands at once: "FedEx" was once shorthand for "overnight delivery"; "Kinko's" was once shorthand for "overnight printing". Now, "FedEx Office" won't be shorthand for anything. And that's not to mention that "Kinko's" is a two-syllable name, while "FedEx Office" takes four.
June 2008 edition of the EconDirectory is out
A listing of almost 300 websites that feature regular updates and commentary on economics and business in general
Spring flooding harasses Nebraska and Iowa