Brian Gongol
GDP rose in the third quarter of the year
But here's the important question: Did it rise due to real new activity, or was that increase a figment of accounting fiction, brought on by "stimulus" programs that will just create hangovers later and massive new debt-financed government spending? The White House is trying to claim that it "saved" a million jobs by "stimulating" the economy. Putting aside how offensive it is for the government to claim that it "creates" jobs (when, really, the private sector does the heavy lifting), the real problem with such claims is that the government is taking credit just for the top-line figure -- economic activity attributed to the deficit spending -- and not taking responsibility for the long-run costs of that spending. A job "created" today with $100,000 in borrowed money not only has to still be around in a few years to have been worthwhile, it also has to pay back that $100,000 -- with interest. Otherwise, it was nothing but a deadweight expense incurred by the government to buy votes for the party in power. A lot of attention is paid to "job creation" that should instead be devoted to "wealth creation". America would be a perfectly fine place to live if we all worked ten hours a week while technology and ideas and robots and other things we created did the work of the other 30 hours (or more) we're doing today. (For example, a brief history of solar power tells the story of humans finding ways to turn our own labor into things we can get the sun to do for us.) Jobs themselves are nothing but a means to an end -- that end being productive activity. We're saving more than we have in a while, but it's still not enough. Too little savings means too little investment. Too little investment means we're going to have to work harder instead of working smarter.
Some drivers may be awful because of their genes
Maybe they could benefit from the weepy little dashboard robot being tested by Audi and MIT researchers. A bit of fake emotion from the robot may be enough to make some drivers more conscientious about things like seat belts and careless driving.
Don't let environmentalism become cover for government overactivity
Liberty may mean the right to contribute to environmental damage. We can fix the environment, but it can take much longer to fix eroded liberties.
The new owners of the Chicago Cubs sure talk like they're serious about winning a World Series
Podcast: Why 10% across-the-board spending cuts won't save us
The Missouri River is now a bit high, exactly the opposite of what was happening a couple of years ago
Motorola Droid will include Google-based satellite navigation
It does seem to be poised to make life difficult for paid-GPS services like the TomTom
GAO worries about what might happen to the Internet if a bunch of people are home sick with the flu
The GAO is concerned that lots of absenteeism could increase demand on residential Internet service providers in case of a severe flu (or other epidemic) outbreak, which could in turn cause a lot of headaches for people who regularly work from home. A lot probably depends on whether people staying at home rely more on Hulu to entertain themselves or Cracked.
Pilot dies ditching plane in the Caribbean, but saves his passengers
BBC managers get pay cut
Times are tough in the broadcasting industry -- even for those who work for an organization funded by a national tax
At least some real scientists enjoy their comedic counterparts on "Big Bang Theory"
Chuck Lorre certainly seems to be putting a lot more of his energy and creativity into "Big Bang Theory" than he's put into his other show, "Two and a Half Men", for quite some time.
New book reveals dirt from behind the scenes at "The Simpsons"
Podcast: Gravy. Yes, gravy.
Record-wet October closing with even more precipitation
Motorola's "Droid" smartphone is on the way next week
It's been designed with several features that could make it a real challenger to the iPhone -- including a bigger screen, a lower up-front price, and a better network in the United States
Anti-vaccination campaigners are not only wacky, they're a hazard to public health
Vaccinations don't always take effectively, and when they don't, people rely upon herd immunity to keep them safe -- if everyone else is properly vaccinated, then they should remain generally well-protected, because no one else is passing around the contagion. But the rise of anti-vaccination stupidity in America has caused some very preventable diseases -- like whooping cough -- to come back. And a child in Iowa has just died of the whooping cough. Perhaps the child was in the middle of a vaccination regimen and it hadn't taken yet. But for the child to have even been exposed almost certainly means that someone nearby hadn't been vaccinated. And that's unacceptable. Vaccines are safe, and the people spreading lies and disinformation about them are endangering us all.
Debt is killing American businesses
A little bit of operational debt can be fine, if it's only used to smooth out the swings between payment and expense cycles. But businesses can't be built on a foundation of massive debt. It just doesn't work. And, unfortunately, the side effect is that over-leveraged businesses can stay afloat long enough to squeeze more conservatively-financed firms out of the market, making everyone worse off.
Increasing political unpopularity follows expansive use of bans and prohibitions in Ontario
The premier there has been using bans to get his way. At least one analyst thinks people are getting tired of it. If true, then good for them. A government that prohibits things it doesn't like is a government that likely hasn't examined all of the available options.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Master of the hidden e-mail message
Some California legislators are mad that an e-mail they received from the Governator contained a hidden message to, well, fornicate themselves. The governor is, predictably, denying there was any intent to send such a hidden message. But, quite honestly, shouldn't someone occasionally tell quarrelsome public officials what to do with themselves in a colorful fashion? LBJ was reputed to use his private endowment as a tool of public persuasion. At least Schwarzenegger is keeping his absurdities to words.
Chicago Cubs and Tribune Company finally part ways
Blackface is generally offensive enough. But using Magic Marker?
Podcast: Stop abusing economic multipliers!
Forecasters expect a warm winter for the Midwest
Fidel Castro's little sister spied on him for the CIA
Estimate figures that half of Americans will have lower living standards in retirement
There just isn't enough saving and it doesn't start soon enough
Where will the next generation of plant scientists come from?
Distracted Northwest Airlines pilots were on their laptops
Somehow, astronomers missed a 30-foot-wide asteroid
It blew apart in Earth's atmosphere on October 8th over Indonesia. But even though it didn't cause any damage on the ground, the problem is that we didn't even see it coming. And the even bigger problem continues to be that we are insufficiently prepared as a species to either fending off a massive collision with something from space or recovering from the effects if such a collision happens. A big enough asteroid could put up a huge dust cloud which could wreak serious havoc on crops -- but since we don't store enough food for an emergency, we're unprepared for that eventuality and people will end up starving. Not everyone, to be sure, but far too many people.
Google will now search through Twitter updates, too
Twitter has been lucky so far. It's managed to capture a huge share of a previously-unrecognized market for very short comments ("microblogging", if one must have a word for it). But it can't stay on top of the market indefinitely, since there's really nothing about the service itself that's ultimately unique. It's nothing more than a glorified RSS feed for short bursts of data. Someone will eventually find a way to deliver the same service more reliably (Twitter is notorious for crashing often) and with some sort of feature that draws participants away. Google, though, is probably smart for starting to troll Twitter for data, since it's self-evident that some sort of public micro-message service will be here to stay. Of course, that doesn't mean that people using those services will think before they type, as they ought to.
Facebook campaign demands that politicians "end poverty now"
The emptiness of these kinds of protests is really disheartening. We already have a very clear path towards "ending poverty": Free markets under the rule of law. It's worked for the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, the UK, Australia, and many other nations. The end of poverty won't arrive because a bunch of people talk about it on Facebook. A preponderance of the poverty in the world can probably be blamed on bad governments that do too much.
FCC chair worries that we don't have enough spectrum to handle smartphones
Smartphones (like the iPhone and BlackBerry) use a lot of bandwidth to get Internet access, and as demand keeps rising, that bandwidth is going to be consumed quickly
UNI's Baker Hall is scheduled for demolition
It'll be an unfortunate loss, considering Baker Hall still retains Art Deco features from its construction that still manage to show up despite years of drab renovations that have stripped it of some of its original character.
Newspaper circulation continues to decline at a high rate
That doesn't mean that newspapers are dead -- but it does mean they have to evolve
How to keep your user information away from Google
(Video) The Onion knows parody
Water pollution costs Exxon Mobil $105 million
Delta flight from Rio to Atlanta lands on taxiway instead of runway
The scale of the error -- and the risk it could have posed if any other planes had been on the taxiway -- is colossal
Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - October 25, 2009