Brian Gongol
Show notes from the WHO Radio Wise Guys - November 8, 2008
Why ants don't get in traffic jams, and how to avoid making an e-mail virus situation worse
Applications for Iowa Environmental Excellence Award are available
US election leads to 20% boost in some UK newspaper sales
The rise of fantastic buildings in central Asia
Oil wealth is feeding a construction boom, but as with all extraction-related economic booms, it's only going to have a limited lifespan. What they do with the oil wealth will determine whether they look back on these days with regret or gratitude.
"Worst virus ever"? Not really.
For some reason, the old e-mail "postcard virus" warning is making its way around the Internet again. People are forwarding hyped-up message about a computer virus (technically, a Trojan horse) that spreads under the cover of being an electronic greeting card. The problem is that the virus itself is known and easily avoided -- but the hype gets so far out of control that people forward the trumped-up warning to everyone they know. That, in turn, often puts people at greater risk of getting new viruses, since many of them spread by copying the names from e-mail forwards and junk-mailing them. The best things to do are to (1) restrain yourself from forwarding horriffic-sounding warnings, since they're often overblown; (2) look up more information on things that sound horribly awry and see if there's any truth to them; (3) use the blind carbon copy method to send out any message with more than about half a dozen recipients; and (4) practice safe behavior generally on the Internet. Forwarding "virus warnings" like the one that's going around just makes the situation worse.
What was the real flaw in the markets?
Maybe more regulation of financial markets is required; maybe not. But it also appears that much of the existing regulation that was in place was ineffective (like the OFHEO, which was supposed to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of trouble), and many of the companies that got into tremendous trouble did so because they drifted away from intelligent long-range business practice and tried to gamble their way to short-term payoffs. China has massive government involvement in the economy, yet it's in the middle of a stock-market disaster anyway. The Shanghai market index has lost almost 70% of its value in the past year.
What you don't hear from the flight deck
(Video) Nobody's ever late because the pilots are giving out free cash to the passengers.
Some of the world's worst sports team names
Wednesday night's "South Park"
(Video) With references to things that people had said and done just on Tuesday night. Impressive -- probably even more so than the quick work done by the people who come up with jokes like "Larry Wolf Olberaldo Doocy 360".
A $300 billion funding gap
"What if we can fix it?"
Newspaper profile of inventor Dean Kamen sheds some light on one of the essential elements of modern free markets: He's a genius inventor who runs his own company, but the only reason he's able to succeed is that he's generally free to do things however he pleases, rather than having to get approval from someone else for every step. A free environment for thought and money alike is the only way to get the fruits of such genius out to the public -- which is why China is going to have trouble becoming an innovation economy, rather than a copycat economy.
There may be economic slowing, but the disaster talk is overheated
Taking the paper out of the newspaper
The Christian Science Monitor appears to be the first national paper in the US to shift from printing daily editions to going Internet-only for its daily output. A lot hinges on knowing what kind of business a company is really in: Is the CSM in the newspaper business or the news-delivery business?
Why ants don't have traffic jams
Despite the huge swarms that move in close proximity to one another, ants relay information to one another about the best routes to take, which means they avoid bumping into one another and backing up. As more and more people have GPS-enabled cell phones, it's hard to imagine it will be long before we get data automatically about traffic along our travel routes, based upon the aggregated movement of all of those phones.
Senator Obama wins; now he needs to lead
It's virtually impossible to tell what kind of President he'll end up being. Expectations among his supporters are almost stratospheric, which means many of them will probably end up being disappointed sooner or later. In that regard, he's just like any other human. He could turn out like George W. Bush, who was elected by a public that expected him to behave like a real fiscal conservative -- only to end up with a Federal debt twice the size of when he took office (a turn of events that has badly damaged the Republican Party). Or, if fortune is on our side, he could turn out like Bill Clinton, who campaigned on the economic left but then turned into a fiscal conservative under the guidance of Robert Rubin. That outcome seems oddly mixed in likelihood; Rubin is an Obama advisor, but Obama also got the nomination by defeating Hillary Clinton, who was the DLC's candidate in 2008 -- the DLC being one of the most free-market-oriented groups in the Democratic Party). Or he might take another path altogether. But he absolutely must address the Medicare funding crisis as well as the exploding Federal debt, both of which he avoided saying almost anything about during his campaign.
Public-works projects are popular, but where will the money come from?
Before you vote, find out how much debt we're in
(Video) A condensed version of the film "IOUSA" is available on YouTube, and the 30-minute version should be enough to scare the daylights out of anyone who can count to ten...much less ten trillion, which is how much debt we're already in. And that doesn't include unfunded liabilities that we're going to end up paying later.
The deadliest VP
(Video) Film noir with Sarah Palin
Civil engineers ask for $38 billion in infrastructure improvements
Head of Dallas Federal Reserve calls this the "mother of all financial storms"
That might be a little hyperbolic, but what certainly isn't hyperbolic is this: He points out that Federal Reserve assets have grown from $890 billion at the start of the year to $1.9 trillion now. The entire US economy produces $14.4 trillion annually.
Fluoride is on the ballot tomorrow
Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - November 2, 2008
Comparing Senator McCain to Senator Obama
Most specifically, how they would handle the huge fiscal problems (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the deficit) ahead