Brian Gongol
Show notes from the WHO Radio Wise Guys - September 6, 2008
Another Internet-only edition of the show due to Hawkeye football
Scary-cute story about preemie twins turns out to be true
Disasters aren't necessarily getting worse because of nature
We just keep putting more people and more property in places that are prone to disaster, like the coasts. The more we do that, the larger the repair bills grow.
Old security problem means Google Chrome might not quite be ready for mass use yet
But the fact that a company only ten years old has come so far and become so ubiquitous is a sign that capitalism is alive and well, driving new innovations nearly as fast as the public can consume them. Related: Microsoft's next batch of security updates will be short but important.
110 years old and still upright
Nebraska's oldest person just turned 110. Which, doing the math, places her year of birth at 1898. That's the year of the Spanish-American war, when William McKinley was in the White House. 110 is really old today, but lots of progress is being made on extending life expectancy. The first half of the 20th Century was marked by huge improvements in life expectancy due to the triumph of medicine over many infectious diseases. Now, the real fight is against chronic ailments, like cancer and Parkinson's. And if it becomes possible to replace our own organs from our own cells (which looks like it's plausible within the next five or ten years), then heart failure and other organ failure might be overcome as a cause of mortality. America's leading causes of death are heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Heart disease and stroke, though, are in many ways preventable, and the faster we find genetic tests for cancer (which could help provide early detection and thus more-successful treatment for perhaps 10% of cancers) and lifestyle factors and vaccines for others, the sooner we can push cancer down the list as well. Much of this is a matter of political and social will.
Two major storms menace the East Coast
Nebraska's fluoridation rules stir passionate responses
BA38 crashed because of ice in the fuel tanks
That's the conclusion of an official report on the crash. That confirms suspicions raised in May as well about the crash of the Boeing 777.
Alarm over drinking-water safety hits the news again
NIST recommends that buildings be constructed to burn out without collapsing
It's a recommendation from a report on the collapse of Seven World Trade Center, one of the collateral losses on September 11th (that is, it wasn't hit by a plane, but it was destroyed anyway). The building burned for seven hours before it collapsed, by which time it had been completely evacuated. That contributes to the controversy over the recommendation: How often could such an event be expected to occur? Is it worth the additional costs for new buildings to be so sturdy they don't collapse even under such rare conditions? The debate, of course, is unique to a society in which we have the resources to even consider doing such things and the freedom to weigh the costs and benefits of those choices.
100% flood protection for Cedar Rapids could be very costly
Google Chrome: A new combatant in the browser wars
It's an open-source browser, a lot like Firefox, so it's free of charge and the code is available to anyone. Whether it's intended to compete with Internet Explorer, Opera, and Firefox with the intent of becoming dominant -- or whether the intent is instead to fill a certain product niche -- is yet to be seen. Assuming the maxim that one ought to use the right tool for the right job, Internet users may very well be served best by a variety of browsers, each with its own unique set of advantages. Sometimes you need a pickup truck, and sometimes you want a sports car. But they all travel the same highways.
Free markets: If you want to be an artist, you can be
A restaurateur in Brooklyn wants to make the best pizza in the world. A free market says, "Go ahead." He considers it art, and as long as people keep wanting to buy it, they can. And if that art makes him happy and keeps his own family fed, then that's enough for everyone involved.
NBC's online Olympics coverage probably helped TV viewership
The ratings suggest that the Internet actually served as a great promotional tool for the television broadcasts, rather than as a competitive medium siphoning viewers away. Every medium has its place: There are things newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet can each do that the others cannot.
The mobile phone may be the most useful invention for Africa in decades
Its value is multiplied several times over by the advent of SMS and mobile Internet access. The spread of LED lighting may also prove to be a huge bounty, since LEDs create light from very little power.
Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - August 31, 2008
Windmills all over Adair County...electric cars...Hurricane Gustav approaches