Brian Gongol
Show notes from the WHO Radio Wise Guys - August 16, 2008
Homemade telegraphy...mold kills family movies...Apple has a security problem...and a podcast
Prince Charles needs to shut up about agriculture
Just because he won the genetic lottery doesn't mean he should be telling the world how to raise crops. His anti-genetic-modification absolutism is enough to threaten millions -- if not billions -- of lives.
Between travel hassles and entrapment, who wouldn't believe this script?
What would you say if someone asked you to participate in an undercover test of airport security? How would you know the difference between a legitimate test and an illegitimate act?
Mold -- yes, mold -- is destroying old video tapes
And because mold spreads via spores, it acts a lot like an infectious disease, which means that people who aren't aware of the risk may be spreading it within their own videotape collections. This would be a very good reason to convert the family library of videotapes to DVD, and soon.
Has Russia become like a hostile corporation with nuclear weapons?
Much of what has Russia has been doing politically can be framed -- purposely or not -- in terms of action to protect the country's energy business. That includes the late news that the Voice of Russia is expanding its broadcasts to Georgia, with whom Russia has been fighting for the past week. They've also opened up a text-messaging service as a means of reaching the region. This is yet another sign that the Voice of America and RFE/RL still have a purpose, and a huge one at that.
Gates Foundation gets underway building $500 million headquarters
It would seem that the million-square-foot building is a signal that they intend the foundation to be around for a long, long time. And that's possible: The Carnegie Corporation has $3 billion in its coffers, almost a century after it was founded.
Do-it-yourself maniac builds his own telegraph receiver
And uses it to clack out the results of RSS feeds from websites. The utility of such a project is almost exactly zero, but it's pretty hilarious to see what happens when someone enthusiastic about modern technology gets nostalgic about yesterday's machines. It's a lot like the newspaperman who made a digital newspaper rack that puts front pages in video form and displays them on a built-in computer monitor. Related: A web designer tries to forecast what the newspaper website of the future will look like.
Boil order imposed on Hemingford
Family turns free $450,000 house into foreclosure
They won the home through the TV show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in 2005, yet somehow managed to take out a second mortgage on the value of the home and lose that money on a business venture. Compare that to how hard the people of Charles City, Iowa, worked to rebuild after a huge part of their town was destroyed by a tornado in 1968, or how the people of Parkersburg, Iowa, are putting things back together just two months after a similar tornado. The "Extreme Makeover" situation only seems to contribute to the mountain of evidence that many Americans are financially illiterate.
Nebraska debates fluoridation
GM is thinking of selling the Hummer line
And it looks like one possible buyer is the richest person in Russia. Remember, the first McDonald's in Russia opened in 1990.
Contractors go to White House, worried about rising costs
Apparently, everyone in all of Clare saw Saturday's tornado
...and took a picture of it
Chinese Olympic gymnasts: If they're not underage, then how come all the evidence is wrong?
Floods put spotlight on Iowa's unsewered communities
IBM report says Apple products have more security holes than any other maker
The report also claims that 94% of all attacks on Internet browsers occur within 24 hours of a vulnerability report, and suggests that independent researchers need to stop publishing the security holes they find since it's encouraging crooks to use them. We do find ourselves in a curious balancing act: If researchers don't have some way to pressure software makers into fixing their problems (for example, by publishing news of the security holes and how to use them), then it's much too easy for the software makers to act as though no problem exists. But on the other hand, it's easy to imagine that easy access to the news of potential exploits makes it much easier for crooks to take advantage of them.
The near-term future of electricity in Iowa
Demand continues to rise, so new plants are probably going to be needed in the next decade or so -- but just as important is the need for better transmission capacity. Energy doesn't do much good if you can't get it going to where it's needed. The inadequacy of the electrical-transmission grid across the country is in considerable need of an upgrade, and that's a problem we've known about for at least half a decade.
94% of Iowa communities have access to broadband Internet
The Iowa Utilities Board says that's an increase over the 92% deployment in May 2006 and 72% of December 2004. DSL and wireless/satellite service seem to have filled most of the service gaps in conventional cable-modem service.
How Cedar Rapids maintained its water supply during the flood
A long list of reasons a windfall profits tax is a bad idea
The Obama campaign is pushing hard for a "windfall profits" tax on the big oil companies, mainly because it sounds like punishment and that panders to people who don't like the high price of gas -- which is just about everyone. But that's not going to help anything: High oil prices are the result of huge demand from around the world and a lack of new production. By raising taxes -- particularly in an unexpected fashion -- the government would simply be discouraging the oil companies from investing in additional production, which in turn just ends up raising prices for consumers. We've known the price of oil has been artificially low for decades -- at least since the 1970s, when we had another "crisis." The answer is not going to be found in tax stunts, but rather in pushing hard for new innovation on all angles of both energy production and consumption. Coincidentally, the government created one of the most absurd "windfall profits" events in history when it extended copyright terms to practically forever -- which, coincidentally, discourages innovation in a major way.
Des Moines Register to hike single-copy sales price to 75 cents
That's a 50% increase, which seems ironic for a paper that just shrank considerably in physical size.
Study suggests proteins could make organs fail in old age
The body's ability to eject damaged proteins from different organs could be what makes the difference between those organs failing and staying in working order. And while the future of bioengineered organs looks extremely promising, it would probably be best if we could avoid needing replacements altogether. It's being claimed now that researchers at Yeshiva University in the Bronx have been able to initiate the required preventative care for the first time...at least in lab animals.
Tomorrow's solar panels could look like plastic sheets
Research by the Department of Energy is suggesting that we could see conventional solar panels replaced by polyethylene sheets loaded with gold nanoantennas that capture infrared radiation instead of visible light