Brian Gongol
Consider the source: Financial edition
A brief and sharp-witted look at how atrocious the financial advice really is in American business magazines. And, unfortunately, not only are people drowning in terrible advice, they're quite possibly on the verge of being taxed on financial transactions, which will almost undoubtedly fail to have the intended effect (slowing thoughtless trading in things like derivatives) and will almost certainly have terrible unintended consequences (like cheating millions of hard-working investors out a portion of their retirement savings). And, all the while, stockholders will continue to be railroaded by pathetically weak boards of directors and pathologically disinterested mutual-fund managers into overpaying business executives for poor performance, which only further serves to steal from their just earnings.
Podcast: People are good. Really.
Treasury Department removes $400 billion cap on lending to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
And at a time when no one is paying attention to the news, of course. The government thinks taxpayers are going to lose $170 billion before all is said and done at the two government-backed mortgage lenders. $170 billion is twice the value of the entire state economy of Iowa. And Iowa's about as close to average-sized a state and a state economy as a person can find, so that ought to put the size of this bailout in perspective.
Terrorist tries to blow up a Delta flight to Detroit
Americans actually kept saving in November
The personal savings rate stayed at 4.7% in November -- practically a miracle when compared with the savings rates of the last 20 years. One of the key problems with the American economy is that we simply don't save like adults ought to. A savings rate of 10% is really about right for most individuals and households, and that was what we had until the 1980s. But then, savings plunged. Debt is what gets a household -- and a nation -- into trouble, and we've been living off debt for far too long. Anyone who wants to get a jolt of reality about the value of savings and patience ought to read up on some of Whitney Tilson's notes from Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings, at which Warren Buffett shares his wisdom for free. Buffett built one of the world's 25 largest companies in a single lifetime, and he didn't get there by inventing anything. Just patience and prudence. Related: Eight consumer brands that bit the dust in 2009.
Webster County uses "reverse 911" to warn residents of an incoming storm
The National Weather Service is expecting an "epic" snowstorm across Iowa, and one north-central county prepared by issuing a county-wide warning about travel that went out by phone. The National Weather Service put the matter like this:
A ONCE IN A QUARTER CENTURY STORM WILL MOVE ONTO THE PLAINS WEDNESDAY AND WRAP UP AND INTENSIFY INTO THURSDAY. A LARGE AREA OF MAINLY SNOW...HEAVY AT TIMES...WILL LIFT NORTH INTO THE TRI STATE AREA WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON INTO WEDNESDAY EVENING. BY THURSDAY MORNING THE WIND WILL BECOME MORE NORTHERLY AND INCREASE WITH GUSTS OF 30 TO 40 MPH LIKELY. WITH A WIDESPREAD 10 TO 20 INCHES OF SNOW...SIGNIFICANT BLOWING AND DRIFTING WILL OCCUR ON THURSDAY INTO FRIDAY.
Sadly, the news media and some agencies like the NWS still use ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME. It only happened in the first place because the original teletype machines couldn't handle mixed-case text, so the convention became CAPS ONLY. Then people started trying to convince themselves that the all-caps routine was easier to read (for reporters and anchors), even though that's self-evidently untrue. If all-caps were easier to read, then books and magazines would be published that way. It isn't, and they aren't. On a related note, someone has taken the time to build a website that interprets the real-world weather for Star Wars fanatics. Whatever it takes to get the word out, one supposes.
Genomes for skin cancer and lung cancer are now known
Researchers think they'll crack brain cancer, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, and ovarian cancer within five years
BlackBerry outage strikes again
Dallas Morning News hints that pilot fatigue may have contributed to the American Airlines incident in Jamaica
The worst touchdown celebration in history
(Video)
The Cubs/Cardinals rivalry never gets this bad
Yankees fans actually kill people
House of Representatives passes $2 billion bill for water and $48 billion for highways
Podcast: Shouldn't the Metrodome have lasted longer than 30 years?
The world's largest companies in 1999 and in 2009
After the Internet bubble burst, market capitalizations shrank. And stayed, well, shrunk.
1,000 circles form a giant sand sculpture in Nevada
And it's not a crop circle hoax -- "crop circles" are hoaxes -- it's the result of 15 days of deliberate labor. And it's quite beautiful.
Car darts
(Video) One of the funniest things they've ever done on the television show "Top Gear". And considering that the incoming snowstorm will probably cause a lot of wrecks in Iowa, it's nice to see damage being intentionally done to cars, rather than just by accident.
Political protest spreads far easier in the Internet age than ever before
(Video) Protest songs were a staple of Sixties culture in the US. But today, anyone with a computer and a microphone can put together a music video and post it on YouTube for the entire world to view -- tens of thousands of times over -- and the subject could be anything, though it's no surprise that technologically-savvy people are producing modern protest songs over things like proposals to crack down on Internet service providers over file-sharing. It should also be observed that school children are often smarter than the network administrators who try to control what they see on the Internet, so we should reject any expectation that governments will be any more successful at controlling what appears online in the future than their phenomenal lack of success today.
Last-minute gift idea: The laptop steering wheel desk
Lots of feedback has been shared by "satisfied customers" with a sense of humor. But the supply of bad ideas shouldn't overshadow the growing supply of good ones, like the planned $75 laptop from the One Laptop Per Child organization that wants to put computers the size of loose-leaf paper in the hands of children worldwide.
Always pay attention to emergency-exit procedures in an airliner
An American Airlines jet just skidded off a runway upon landing in Jamaica and at least 40 people were hurt in the process. But nobody was killed, and that's the good news. It's been estimated that 30% of plane-crash deaths could have been avoided through better attention to instructions and smarter (often calmer) responses. As much as anything else, people need to learn to count the rows to the two nearest exits.
Study of 95 drinkers concludes that bourbon creates a tougher hangover than vodka
Meanwhile, a study of all of the world's drinkers finds that a few glasses of water during a night out will ease the next morning, no matter what they drank
Omaha utility says environmentalist group took cheap shots at their water
Let the cultural imperialism commence!
The WTO has ordered China to start letting in more American movies and music
Facebook blamed for a lot of divorces
A British law firm says the website is cited in 20% of its divorce cases
Third-quarter economic growth: 2.2%
That's an annualized rate of growth for the US economy as a whole. Unfortunately, a whole lot of it was based on heavily-subsidized new-car sales that will come back to cost us dearly.
Twitter may finally become profitable
The service is supposed to get $25 million from Google and Bing (combined). How the service will remain profitable for the next 20 years is yet to be seen. In fact, it almost certainly won't be around in ten years -- at least not without changes that would render it nearly unrecognizable.
Organ-transplant delivery aided by Des Moines radio
A self-serving observation, perhaps, but WHO Radio facilitated the delivery of an organ for transplant that had been stuck in a snowstorm earlier this month
American weather maps since 1871
Really. A weather map for every day since US Grant was President
Darth Vader opens the New York Stock Exchange
(Video) It was a stunt in supposed acknowledgement of the perpetual popularity of "Star Wars", but really? Isn't the symbolism a little too disturbing for good taste?
9 million gallons of sewage spill into Puget Sound
Custom-printed organs are just around the corner
Companies behind the "meat printer" say they'll have arteries and veins available for bypass surgery within five years, and hearts and livers within ten
GM hires CFO from Microsoft to run its finances
The new guy will be moving from one of the world's most cash-rich companies (Microsoft has $31 billion in cash on-hand, enough to run the government of the State of Iowa for five years) to one of the most cash-strapped in history. GM has pension obligations in the $85 billion range or more, underfunded by an estimated $20 billion. It's a pretty remarkable undertaking to jump from one to the other, to be sure. And GM isn't the only iconic company with a huge uphill battle just to stay in business: The legendary British Airways is struggling with a labor union that doesn't seem to understand that it can't just have whatever it wants. When air travel becomes a commodity (as it has been for a long, long time), then no airline can justify spending twice as much for cabin crew than others just because the union wants it.
Facebook is a huge time sink -- but you already knew that
Companies in India think they're losing 12.5% of their ordinary productivity to social networking
British troops are about to get their first camouflage upgrade in 40 years
American forces went about upgrading to a pixelated-style camouflage in 2007
Radio on-demand: Just because Congress can't count doesn't mean we're all that stupid
Attention Roland-Story High School: The EPA says you can breathe now