Brian Gongol
Radio show notes: Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - August 10, 2014
Washington should probably re-name its NFL team, but American Indians have much bigger problems to solve
One worries that the obsession over the "Washington Redskins" name distracts people from the terrible problems affecting American Indian communities in many parts of the country, including enormous physical and mental health crises and desperate poverty.
The Moon looks extra-bright right now
Who's in the Cabinet?
Here's a challenge, even for the well-informed and politically-engaged: Name the members of the Obama Cabinet. You might get half. There isn't enough delegation happening at the White House.
London's top cop interrupts TV interview to make arrest
"The ultimate tech guy you love to hate"
How the Chicago Cubs are building a winning system -- for real this time
A dream without a plan is just a wish. What's new for the Cubs system is that there's finally a plan (after a century of loveable losing). It has the best chance of working of anything the Cubs have ever tried, and if (or, Ernie Banks willing, when) it works, it will actually be a case study for business schools.
A future of work with many more robots
USDA expects Iowa to have a record-setting corn crop this year
185 bushels an acre, beating last year's 165 bushels per acre by a wide margin
Reviving a dead satellite
Buzzfeed thinks $50 million will help it move beyond stupid lists
They're good at distribution, but now they're going to try throwing a lot of ideas at a wall to see what sticks.
Death of Robin Williams brings spotlight to America's crisis of suicides
Giant slide sells at Iowa State Fair for half a million dollars
But the prior owner says he was making that in profits about every two years. For the record: If you have a business that pays for itself in two years, don't sell it to the Iowa State Fair -- operators are standing by and waiting for your call.
Red-light camera corruption now faces real justice in Chicago
PR people get paid more than journalists, on average, and the gap is growing
And there are a lot more of them
Microsoft offers a much better first-person time-lapse algorithm
Enough people are running around with Go Pro cameras and other first-person video recorders that they're becoming quite the genre. But the videos can be jerky and hard to watch -- so they've figured out how to smooth the flow of the video so that it moves from perfect first-person into more of a synthesized, stabilized follower.
How the US military leadership uses social media
Generals and their peers are a lot like high priests -- they preside over a highly-structured culture with a lot of in-group language, symbols, and rituals that outsiders don't understand. How they choose to reach out to the outside when those tools become available comes without much of a textbook for guidance.
Federal Reserve faces trickiest economic stunt of all time
The amount of money pumped into the economy as a stabilizing force? Huge. The consequences for pulling that money out too quickly? Extremely painful. The damage that could be done if the money stays in too long and creates inflation? Just as awful, but drawn out in slow-motion.
Mini-bonds sell out quickly in Denver
People wanted to buy low-priced local bonds, and they sold out in a hurry. This model should be considered for lots of economic-development projects in other places -- especially those projects that are purely speculative in nature, which public officials too often get in the business of funding with other people's money.
Could the A-10 be saved by cutting the F-35?
Local police are being pulled out of Ferguson, Missouri
After the reprehensible behavior of some officers documented by a Washington Post reporter, something serious has to change.
Americans know when to blow up the old and replace with the new
An old home may look nice, but if it's outlived its usefulness, then the time has come for it to be demolished. There's nothing wrong with a little nostalgia, but people shouldn't use that nostalgia as a justification to confiscate the freedom of others via "historic preservation" tools.
BMW leaves AM radios out of new electric cars
They claim there's signal interference from the motor
Leaflets heralding a caliphate in the Middle East get distributed in London
The more ISIS/ISIL takes on the trappings of a state, the worse this situation is going to look
Chinese savers are putting trillions of dollars into trusts and "wealth-management" products
The Pope in a Soul
Pope Francis, visiting South Korea, picks a Kia Soul for his temporary Popemobile. The jokes about the Pope having a Soul are almost too obvious, but symbolic gestures like this communicate a valuable message from a person like the Pontiff.
Canadian woman stabbed with a needle in the middle of a street
One worries for the woman individually, and for the possibility that this kind of thing might be related to some kind of dry run for a bigger threat
Windows 9 could look a lot like Windows 8, but with familiar trappings revived from Windows 7
The computing market seems to be stabilizing, with laptop and desktop sales coming out of a steep decline precipitated by the arrival of tablets. Rumor has it test editions of Windows 9 could be available by October.
47% of American workers are at high risk of computerization
The more routine your work, the more likely you are to find yourself automated out of a gig. To an extent, automation can be a highly productive change (allowing people to spend time on valuable work, instead of rote chores). And for consumers it can be a win, too -- if you don't mind self-service check-out lanes, for instance, it's a way to get in and out of a store much faster. But automation isn't a panacea: As Honda has demonstrated, automation doesn't always improve manufacturing as much as the smart application of the right tools in the hands of workers who know and understand their jobs. A robot programmed once can't improve, but a conscientious and engaged human worker might.
Google offers "video quality report"
A graph without a label on the Y-axis isn't much good, really, but that's the best Google offers with its chart for comparing the video quality delivered by Internet service providers in any given area.
CBS initiates hardball with TV affiliates
They're dropping their Indianapolis affiliate for another station starting January 1st. CBS is trying to extract more money from affiliate stations, it appears, and this is a signal that they won't stick with the ones who won't pay up.
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad proposes "connecting every acre" with wireless broadband
High-speed Internet access certainly can be a high-value tool for farming, and agriculture is a high-value segment of Iowa's economy
A cat, wearing a shark costume, riding a Roomba
(Video)
John Deere is laying off a lot of workers
It's bad news for Iowa, where the Ankeny and Ottumwa plants are being heavily affected. The price of corn has tanked over the last year, and that's bad news for anyone selling equipment to farmers.
Super-quality satellite photos are soon coming to the market