Brian Gongol
America remains the world's most attractive place for investment
Irish group uses fake profiles on Tinder to highlight sex trafficking
KC Federal Reserve says the Midwest manufacturing economy is "sluggish"
Facebook tweaks the news feed to make it easier to throttle back individuals
Social media have made it much too easy to find out who's a lot crazier than you might have guessed from real-life encounters. Facebook is wise to insert this tool -- probably long-overdue, really -- since the problem with any online tool is that people can easily declare "bankruptcy" of sorts on their accounts. When MySpace got too overbearing, people just left.
China's putting $40 billion into a "silk road" project
More money being spent on infrastructure to expand influence across Asia. They have loads of cash, low-return options for domestic investment, and a serious need to sustain economic growth by any and all means. We'll see more big announcements like this.
Show notes - Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - November 9, 2014
Disney princesses without the impossible waistlines
Somehow, a store built on a 9-year-old's fashion whims doesn't sound like a permanent business model
Observations on Sesame Street's iconic Pinball Number Count
Does working in Foxconn's Chinese factories sap people of their will to live?
White House intrusion incident: Everything that could have failed or gone wrong, did
Forecasting consultancy thinks a recession in 2015 is 65% likely
Des Moines mother lets her 5-year-old die of neglect
Even the most ardent libertarian should recognize the compelling interest that the state must have in protecting children
How serious are we about our eastern-frontier NATO allies?
Russia is aggressively showing off its military hardware around the Baltic (and elsewhere). How seriously should we take these displays, and are we deadly serious about going to war to defend our allies if they are attacked?
Sometimes what kids need for better development...is job training for their parents
If we give lip service to the importance of "education", but treat it as though it's something we do as children and then forget about later, then we're going to be disappointed in the long term. It's no good to think of a diploma as the end of education, particularly in a globally competitive economy. And if kids aren't able to come home to stable home lives, it's much harder for them to learn...which means that we need to address the need for education and job training comprehensively. Post-secondary education costs too much and there are too many barriers to study. That's absurd, considering that we have the Internet at our fingertips and a national interest in raising the quality of our labor force.
"Newsweek" argues that technology is "stuck"
That is: It's creating lots of baubles, but not a lot of real progress. While there are a lot of meaningless, distracting products that are making their way to market, technology is iterative. It has to grow in small steps, in addition to big leaps. And those big leaps are unpredictable and infrequent.