Brian Gongol
Show notes from the WHO Radio Wise Guys - October 11, 2008
Learn Chinese...from the British...on the Internet
Delivering safe water to the world
No one seems to know whether Berkley Breathed is going to kill Opus
It would be preferable if he didn't. Even if he retires from a weekly Sunday strip, it would be nice to keep the character "alive" in the public mind, so that he could occasionally show up elsewhere -- perhaps online, even, whenever the spirit moves Breathed. For some reason, good cartoon characters begin to feel like real people, and we don't want them to die.
Cedar Rapids Gazette tells Associated Press to take a hike
Iowa's second-largest newspaper has notified the AP that it plans to withdraw from the organization, protesting rate increases and service cutbacks.
"And, unlike Apple, the short-tempered megalomaniac who founded Microsoft has retired"
A cartoonist delivers a great set of lines about the Mac-vs.-PC debate, in a way that Microsoft's huge, expensive new ad campaign seems to be incapable of doing.
Six years later, we still can't forget Eldred v. Ashcroft
That was the case -- argued October 9, 2002 before the Supreme Court -- that cemented the preposterous Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, extending the effective term of copyright to a period best measured in centuries. It's ludicrous and it harms the economy and the progress of technology. The act should be tossed out post-haste. Even if it's done more than six years' worth of damage already. Perhaps especially so.
National debt clock runs out of digits as it rolls past $10 trillion
The outrageous growth in the Federal debt has long been one of the biggest economic threats to the United States. The debt is now galloping upwards, which itself is not impossible to overcome -- but the problem is that the longer it's allowed to grow, the harder it will be to overcome.
First off, much of the debt is being incurred on temporary, non-durable things. If debt were being incurred to develop things that would last (like highways or technology), then it might be justifiable. But it's not.
Second, the larger the debt grows, the higher the interest rates we'll pay. Just like Warren Buffett could get a better interest rate on a credit card than you could (since he's obviously good for it), the interest rates we pay on a debt of $10 trillion are (all else being equal) higher than the rates we'd pay on a debt of $5 trillion, $1 trillion, or $100 billion. The larger our debt, the higher the risk that we'll fail to pay it off, and lenders make up for the risk by charging higher interest rates.
Third, the more we indenture ourselves to debt, the more we choke off the available funds for investment in other useful things. The money being lent to the government (forming our debt) comes from the pool of all the available investment dollars (and euros, yen, rubles, and so on) in the world. If Federal debt were not an investment option, those dollars would be invested in other things -- likely including private, profit-making (and job-creating) ventures. It's well past time to get off the debt diet.
The Onion unintentionally provides some perspective
A satirical item from the "historical archive" makes light of the size of our great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. But in a way, that's the kind of perspective we need right now. A lot of people are making it sound as though we're at the end of the world as we know it thanks to the credit markets. That's overstatement. No matter how the situation shakes itself out, we're still smarter, healthier, and longer-lived than our predecessors of 50 or 100 years ago, not to mention 200 years ago. We just have to learn how to balance our demand for things like neat toys with our perpetual obligation to plan for the future.
When people start insisting there's no bubble, there's probably a bubble
Dubai's completely absurd building boom is about to get...well, absurd-er. The completely insane Burj Dubai, which is going to end up being a good 50% to 75% taller than the Sears Tower by the time it's done this year, is already engendering a whole new level of envy. Another developer is planning to build a 1000-meter-tall building, which would be around 20% taller than the Burj Dubai. It's certainly unsustainable in the long run to have so many aggressive developers all trying to top one another in the same small place. Meanwhile, the West is facing a slowdown in public-works construction as state and local governments run into trouble borrowing money. But despite it all, the world isn't over yet, even if we're being subjected to pictures of sad guys on trading floors.
Storm sewer fails in Bettendorf
Iowa and Nebraska form a bright spot on the drought map
Britain initiates a partial nationalization of its major banks
Don't be surprised if something similar happens in the US: The Treasury Secretary is already hinting at it.
A little math could result in a little less regret
Gmail offers a tool to protect users from themselves: "Mail Goggles" (like an inverse version of beer goggles) will force users to do some math problems, quickly, before the system will allow them to send their messages during specified windows...generally intended to be the hours when the hapless Gmail user might find himself or herself intoxicated. It's clever and funny, and a little harder to brush off than a simple pop-up box asking, "Do you really want to send this?"
The Presidential debates need a Marshalite
There's little more tiresome than listening to the debate moderators have to nanny the Presidential candidates over and over about staying within the time limits they agreed upon. What we really need is for the Commission on Presidential Debates to install a simple two-sided Marshalite clock on each candidate's podium. None of the stupid red-light, green-light stuff they've used in the past. Let everyone see how much time is left, and just how long each candidate has gone over. (The Marshalite, by the way, was a rotary traffic signal -- a circular stoplight, if you will -- that indicated via an arrow what stage of the signal the motorist was in. It should be updated using LEDs to make the signal lengths variable during different traffic patterns and marketed today.)
Skype becomes the latest company called out for collusion with Chinese censors
The Chinese government knows it has to allow the Internet in -- without it, a country might as well shut off its phone service and turn out the lights. The Internet is essential to the conduct of modern business. But the government there still wants to control and censor what its people talk about -- even in private conversation -- so they monitor what people say on Skype. A Canadian group says it's found a public list of the words the Chinese government is trying to block, and a list of user records. Something is going to have to give in China: This conflict between individual liberty and government control cannot be sustained in the long term. Related: An old Solidarity poster using Gary Cooper's image from "High Noon" -- carrying a ballot instead of a gun -- should make the same point. Communism is destined for the dustbin of history.
A new 88-acre lake for Omaha?
No matter what else happens, we still don't have to re-invent the wheel
Lots of people seem to have concluded that a volatile stock market is the same as a visit by the horsemen of the apocalypse. But in reality, human progress is measured by what we know and what skills we retain -- not by whether shares in McDonald's went for a higher price today than yesterday. The burning of the library at Alexandria was a real global crisis. As long as we don't forget what we know, the future will still have plenty of opportunity to be better than today.
eBay dumps 10% of its employees
Investing in water
Iceland's GDP: $14 billion. Its banking liabilities: $100 billion.
Iceland hardly comes to mind as the kind of place where one might expect near-total economic meltdown. But it certainly looks like the small country has some huge problems. The US should take heed: In an effort to get the situation under control, the country is facing interest rates of 15% and higher, and a huge spike in inflation. Those are perhaps the two biggest risks the US faces as the rest of the world loses faith in our fiscal responsibility. We just happen to be outrageously lucky that at this very moment, the world economy has grown by leaps and bounds and there's lots of excess capital with few places to go...except here. That won't last forever. Related: If Iceland's problems sound disproportionate, consider that Citigroup is suing for $60 billion over a $2.16 billion deal to buy out Wachovia -- a deal which was trumped by a $15.1 billion offer from Wells Fargo.
DARPA wants an ultrasound tool to stop major bleeding within 18 months
A review of changes to the Chicago Tribune
The scripts at the end of the world
What the BBC would have said in case of a nuclear attack
Sen. Chuck Hagel retires
It's too bad he's leaving -- Hagel has been a rare, much-needed fiscal conservative
Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - October 5, 2008
Topics include: Higher interest rates coming...paying attention to our southern friends...revisiting "no policy without a crisis"...and a podcast
Palm tries to find its way out of the PDA wilderness