Gongol.com Archives: 2014 Weekly Archives
Brian Gongol



Computers and the Internet You're being watched
We're all leaving breadcrumb trails all over the Internet -- and in private databases of our interactions with private companies. That's a pretty inevitable result of computing technology. Want to get an idea of just how much is known (and sold) about you? Try Acxiom's AboutTheData.com.

Socialism Doesn't Work American sentenced to six years of hard labor in North Korea
(#1) Why would any right-thinking American go to North Korea? Sure, it looks like a place completely out of sync with the rest of the planet, but that's no reason to visit. (#2) What kind of system is so awful that it responds to stupid tourists and missionaries with sentences of years in prison labor camps? (#3) Do we not have a strategy for peacefully ridding the planet of the North Korean Communist menace?

Agriculture The decline and fall of the Red Delicious apple
Looks mattered more than flavor for a long, long time. And at last, the superficial is giving way to taste.

Weather and Disasters The reconstruction of Pilger
It takes a lot to rebuild a community wiped out by a massive tornado. On one hand, they now have the opportunity to start with a blank slate and develop the community with a deliberate outcome in mind. But it came at a tremendous human cost, and there's no guarantee that the population will ever recover to its pre-storm level -- which just means lots of costs spread out among fewer people.

Business and Finance The world is headed for a beer duopoly

News Apartment rental is a hot market in Omaha

Broadcasting Radio shownotes - Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - September 14, 2014
The show is on the air live at 9pm Central, 1040 on the AM dial or streamed online.



News If you leave me now...
The emotional tug-of-war that looms over the Scottish independence vote is pretty significant. From an economic perspective, an independent Scotland is probably going to have a tougher time -- as a smaller and less diverse economy than the UK as a whole, it's going to have wider natural swings between boom and bust, without the benefit of a highly credible central bank like the Bank of England to provide a counterweight. That doesn't mean it's set for failure -- plenty of smaller countries already exist, and Scotland has the benefit of substantial oil wealth at its disposal. That oil-related income helps give Scotland a higher per-capita GDP than the rest of the UK, but those oil riches can be severely deceiving if they're not wisely converted into durable wealth. Many a nation has fallen into the natural-resources trap: Living off a non-renewable natural resource boom without investing heavily in the things that drive growth for a future without it. Could they learn all of the right lessons from the Celtic Tiger without making the same mistakes as Ireland?

Aviation News Boeing and SpaceX will be carrying NASA's astronauts to space in 2017
There's nothing wrong with the government contracting out for services like this -- the only problem is that they waited so very long to actually get an arrangement in place, when everybody knew we were going to retire the Space Shuttle program in 2011. It would have been wise to have had a new program in place to pick up the baton without such a huge gap in between.

Business and Finance How bank capitalization rules could raise your home heating bill
RBC, for instance, sold hedges to buyer groups (including the one that serves Omaha's MUD and the Cedar Falls Utilities), and now it says it needs out to comply with Basel III

Science and Technology Material absorbs 99.96% of incoming light
That makes it the most impossibly black thing humans have made

News Adult autograph hounds ruin it for kids

Business and Finance Marriott's launching a campaign to tip the housekeeping staff
A lot of travelers don't even know it's an expectation



News "Free Syrian Army" says it's going to fight Al Qaeda/ISIS/ISIL/QSIL and Assad at the same time

News Teenage boy kills Omaha jewelry shop owner
It wasn't even in a bad part of town. Incidents like this one underscore the social desirability of making sure boys and young men have constructive things to do -- that means good schools with extracurricular programs, organized team sports, and (perhaps most importantly) low barriers to entry-level jobs. If you assume (consistent with the data) that 99% of people are naturally good or at least neutral, then any incidence of violent crime instigated by anything more than 1% of the population is something society probably could have done something more to prevent. That in no way absolves the individual from the responsibility to be good and to do good things -- but it's only wise to take precautions to protect the community from bad outcomes.

Computers and the Internet The Chinese government is a vast and persistent cyberthreat

Threats and Hazards Sinister terrorist plot broken in Australia

Agriculture Why tree-huggers want to kill some maple trees



Business and Finance PBR is being sold to the Russians
Pabst, once an iconic Milwaukee beer, hasn't even been headquartered there since 2010. It's now being sold to Oasis Beverages, out of Russia, in partnership with an investment company. A few observations: First, brands and brand perceptions are always going to matter when it comes to things like food and drink, since people care most about the things they put inside their bodies. Second, hearkening back to the sale of Anheuser-Busch to the Brazilians and Belgians back in 2008, if people don't want to lose control of companies, they have choices available to them -- like buying and retaining control. Choose not to do that? Fine. But control comes via ownership. Third, as long as debt remains cheap and the United States remains the world's most stable free market, we shouldn't be surprised in the least to find that foreign owners take a liking to American assets. They're highly attractive because America is highly attractive. The more uncertain the rest of the world appears, the more certain investments in America will look.

Threats and Hazards Mother of Omaha jewelry-store killer says he was "hanging out with the wrong crowd"
Anything that makes it harder for young people -- especially young men -- to find something productive to do makes it easier for them to fall in with the "wrong crowd." Consider that when people tell you that a $15 minimum wage is some grand solution to all of the world's problems. Everyone remains individually responsible for their own behavior -- but we as a society shouldn't be blind to the conditions we ourselves create and the unintended consequences thereof. Youth unemployment is a deeply serious problem, and we shouldn't knowingly make it worse. And if it becomes a chronic condition, then we may end up paying the costs for decades.

News The Tampa Bay Times is on borrowed time
Reports have it that the paper is a matter of weeks from a possible financial collapse.

News Scotland votes to stay in the UK
But the BBC might've overstated things in saying the 55% to 45% vote was a "decisive rejection" -- that's only a 5-point swing

News An appalling number of Americans don't know how the government works
A third don't even know the name of a single branch of government

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Threats and Hazards The "most transparent administration" is setting new standards for blocking public access to information


Business and Finance Federal Reserve keeps interest rates at practically zero

Computers and the Internet How "liking" things on Facebook can ruin your perception of reality

Iowa Cedar Rapids struggles to justify illegal traffic speed cameras