Brian Gongol

It seems fair to estimate that 20% of the world is made up of nerds. By "nerds", we mean those who are deeply knowledgeable about something that the rest of the world really couldn't possibly care less about. There are economics nerds, science nerds, genealogy nerds, and -- to the great fortune of the people aboard the plane that landed in the Hudson River -- aviation nerds, one of whom happened to be at the controls of the plane. Thank goodness for nerds. Related: Perhaps some of those aviation nerds would like to take a shot at doing some pro-bono work to make aeronautical charts safer to use.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that it's more expensive to keep the printing presses open for six months than it would cost to send every subscriber an Amazon Kindle (retail price: $359).

Rail-freight managers in the UK are upset that they're being shoved aside to keep passenger trains on time


