Brian Gongol
Notes from the WHO Radio Wise Guys - July 26, 2008
Bringing back the Streamline Era...Cuban microwave ovens...the problem with meta tags...and a podcast
Incredible storms hit southwestern Iowa
Personalized medicine en route even without individual genome maps
Once we reach the point when most people can have their genomes sequenced for a reasonable price -- and that day is probably only a decade away -- we'll have a lot more valuable information about what health risks we might potentially face than we've ever had before. That, in turn, ought to enhance the future of preventative medicine; if you know, for instance, that you're at high genetic risk for skin cancer, then you'd be an idiot not to wear sunscreen and avoid overexposure. But it turns out that we may also be on the verge of figuring out a lot more about what's happening in the body in real time through the study of chemical balances and bodily bacteria. Either way, we should probably view this with a great deal of optimism, since it usually costs a lot less to prevent diseases or to address them in very early stages than to wait until they've progressed enough to really catch our attention. There could be huge policy implications, too: You might not be responsible for what's in your own genes, since you had no say in what you were given. But if you were told that you had a certain set of genetic risks and then chose not to take preventative measures, then should the rest of society be obligated to pay for your failure to take precautions? It's no small question, given the huge growth in expected Medicare obligations in the coming decades. And the precedent for individual responsibility for preventative action is quite obvious in the examples of seat-belt laws and auto-insurance requirements. One of the trickiest parts will be figuring out how to track that responsibility without setting up a national Health Police force.
Fed-up Chicago suburb still threatens to leave county
Cook County is dominated by Chicago, but it holds power over a number of big suburbs. One of them is threatening to secede from the county because officials there feel like they're getting awful service from the county government. A state senator who is sympathetic to the cause says, "If Cook County can't improve, can't change, can't deliver the government we deserve...we feel we have the right to govern ourselves." This is turning into a case study in why city-county mergers are usually a bad idea. Cook County and Chicago aren't even technically merged, but their combined power is enough to crush the interests of surrounding communities with different priorities. Fortunately, secession may offer them recourse.
"The higher the price of oil, the sooner an alternative will be found"
Why, yes, that's right. And if the value of turning solar power into energy rises sufficiently, then Africa may be the best place to be for the next energy boom -- it has more landmass at or near the Equator than any other part of the world, and the Sahara Desert is practically the world's largest solar collector.
Losing money but buying prestige
Schools will only ever be as good as the community wants them to be
Talk of state and Federal standards for education blindly overlooks the fundamental fact that schools will never be any better than local communities want them to be. Funding and resources, of course, will always play a role in determining the quality of local education. But far more important is whether the families raising the children who go to school care about how good those schools are. Education is a person-to-person process, so expecting new rules, guidelines, and legislation to make any serious difference is fundamentally misguided.
Translating MIT into Chinese
A Taiwanese millionaire has devoted part of his wealth to funding the translation of materials from MIT's Open CourseWare into Chinese. One can certainly imagine some meritorious outcomes should a few of the 1.3 billion people living under Communism in China come to realize that there's some value in liberty and freedom as a result of exposure to those classes.
Hasbro claims intellectual-property infringement against Scrabble, but the Internet doesn't appear to care
Oil spill threatens drinking water in New Orleans
Power outages lead to wastewater bypasses
Practical change will beget ideological change in Cuba
(Article in Spanish) Writer laments that Cubans are being granted minor practical changes in daily life -- like the right to have a cell phone -- but are still denied fundamental human rights like that of free speech. And it's true that the denial of those freedoms is tragic. But in the big picture, little rights are going to form the route to the big ones. In the former Soviet Bloc, the emergence of the fax machine, photocopier, and personal computer enabled practical communication to take place that helped embolden the pro-freedom movement (the Solidarity movement, for instance, published leaflet-sized newsletters in defiance of government prohibitions). In contemporary China, those very mobile phones that Cubans are just now getting have been used to organize demonstrations and protests. Access to basic consumer technologies may not seem like much of a right, but consider this: Suppose a Cuban family gets a microwave oven, cutting dinner-preparation time by, say, 20 minutes. Those 20 minutes can be used in any number of ways, but suppose they're used to read a clandestine copy of something by John Stuart Mill or to listen to Radio Marti or to just get into a dinner-table argument over whether a person ought to have the right to private property. Small improvements in technology enable people to take stock of the things they really value, and that (thanks to human nature's inclination towards a thirst for liberty) in the medium term may be enough to give Communism a much-needed heave-ho in Cuba.
60 years ago, West Berlin was under a Soviet blockade
What in the world will places like Tehran, Beijing, and Karachi look like 60 years from now? Or, for that matter, Mexico City and Havana? An interesting proposal was floated about a year ago that suggested that the US should back the creation of "free cities" around the world, where American-style laws and freedoms would apply, with the come with implicit guarantees of American cooperation to help sustain them. We might even think of taking it a step further, and offering that we'll open our doors to the accession of any state, province, or territory that wishes to join us. It's hardly a new idea -- the EU is actively engaging in an accession project, and it's merely a historical anomaly that the United States hasn't added any new territory in a long time. It's been half a century since we added Alaska and Hawaii, but there was a time when new states were admitted to the Union every few years. No territory need be taken by force, but we ought to consider hanging the "Welcome" sign in the metaphorical front window.
Surprise! Threats of higher taxes are chasing financial firms out of London
Derecho storm beats up Iowa
Another story of a flooding near-miss
The cost of long-term health care: One more liability we're collectively ignoring
As people live ever longer, the accruing expenses of keeping them alive and healthy as long as possible are going to continue to squeeze the budgets of state and Federal governments. What's really frightening is how some of the spillover from costs that the Federal government can't handle is putting the states in fiscal trouble. It's unlikely that anyone really has a solid understanding of just how much we're going to end up spending in the coming years, nor where the money is supposed to come from.
Have we not enough love for nuclear power?
In the long term, we're going to need lots and lots of energy, and it seems like one of the best places to get it is from electricity. If nuclear power is the best way to produce that electricity, then we probably ought to be addressing what incentives and disincentives are out there, determining how much of it is produced. Distribution losses in the power grid are a huge drain on the energy budget; just as we look for ways to produce more energy, we ought to be looking for ways to make sure we get to use all of what we produce.
It's just bad manners to leave a high-five hanging
After all, just how long can a person wait?
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon
It's not going to stop just because people start haggling at the store
Storms cause big power outages across Iowa
Land's cheap on Venus
Too bad that the only palatable atmospheric conditions are well above the surface. In the long term, humans are going to need to colonize space just to ensure that the species doesn't get wiped out by something catastrophic on Earth. But Venus is probably not the best choice for a second home.
Rumors suggest Russia's security service is backing cyberattacks on Ukraine
Cyberwarfare may be non-bloody, but it can sure wreck an economy. If the rumors are true, then it's evidence that Russian officials are in a mood to assert their sense of power again.
Charles Barkley's "turrible" golf swing
Taking Nature to task
Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - July 20, 2008
Ireland dumps the EU constitution...Katrina Cottages for Cedar Rapids...and new prizes for energy innovations. A podcast is available.
Why would Ireland want to put the kibosh on the EU constitution?
The vote has really aggravated a lot of the other member nations of the EU. The Irish prime minister is begging his countrymen to reconsider, and the EU is applying pressure by sending French President Sarkozy over for a campaign visit. It makes plenty of sense for Ireland to have voted "No" on the constitutional referendum -- Ireland's economy is one of the strongest in Europe, and the proposed constitution is pretty heavy on bureaucracy. It will be interesting to find out whether that lesson will come from the Sarkozy listening tour.
The automation of education takes a surprising step forward via iTunes
Medical researchers have been using PDF files to distribute new research findings quickly and efficiently for a while now, but one of the drawbacks to the format is that it's really hard to categorize the files in a way that lets users find them quickly. But some researchers have figured out that iTunes can manage PDF files, letting users add tags and labels to files so that they can be organized in a useful way. The better we get at this sort of surprising practical application of technology, the better off our future will be.
