Brian Gongol
August 20, 2015

Former CEO pleads guilty to a $2 million deal


The value of a tool like that is hard to quantify, but psychologically huge


Lots of important things, including in political life, depend on numbers. If a person (like a Presidential candidate) can't even come close to getting the numbers right, then that person is functionally innumerate. And that's a problem.
August 19, 2015

A freak incident wiped out some data stored on Google cloud servers


If your worldview is threatened by the advance of knowledge, then you have a problem.

Chuck Todd's interviews with Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders on the August 16th episode of "Meet the Press" were about as penetrating as a cover story for the "Weekly Reader".

August 18, 2015

The State Department just "found" thousands of emails it said did not exist

Or, at least, as a dying canary in the coal mine of a healthy civic society. See also "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis

The website catering to those who want to arrange extramarital affairs was targeted by a curiously moralistic kind of criminal

A site called "My Social Book" will convert an individual's Facebook feed into a printed bok. Sure, it's appealing in a sense to have a personalized journal. But if you share enough on Facebook to fill an actual book, it's time to pump the brakes. Over-sharing on Facebook can lead to identity theft, among other serious personal hazards.

If television stations are rebroadcasting old episodes of the Johnny Carson-era "Tonight Show", then someone really needs to work on talent development for today's broadcasters. Carson was a genius, no doubt -- but why hasn't anyone with comparable talent emerged in the 23 years since the show left the air?

August 17, 2015

The decline in the price of natural gas is making American electricity extra-cheap. Meanwhile, the cost of labor is rising in China. These factors mean that the overall cost of manufacturing in the United States is now within rounding error of that in China, and is likely to be in an advantageous positin within a couple of years.

The latest iteration of Google's operating system for mobile devices is ready for the last major step before public use

A terrific war poster just as accurate today as a century ago

Of course university officials oppose unionization by their "student-athletes", but until that phrase ceases to be a pretty awful euphemism when applied to major college football programs, someone needs to continue agitating for a change of some sort. It doesn't have to be unionization, but it needs to be something.

FCC finally approves an exemption for iRobot (makers of the Roomba) to use low-power radio signals to control the mowers. Honda already sells robotic mowers in the UK, so the technology isn't entirely new. Overall, the less time human beings spend on silly tasks like lawn mowing, the better.