Gongol.com Archives: 2018 Weekly Archives
January 10, 2018
Self-appointed moral authority Jerry Falwell, Jr. says that the President's behavior "is no longer relevant". This is perhaps the best contemporary illustration why politics and religion should be kept apart: Not because religion would overwhelm politics, but because politics can corrupt religion.
The gig economy isn't bias-free
Women get treated differently not just in conventional workplaces, but in the gig economy, too -- even when they're the employers.
While the United States dithers
The European Union is getting the signals: If the United States is going to hollow out its international presence under the Trump Administration, they're going to have to address a rearranged global power structure. French President Emmanuel Macron is in China, saying "I want us to define together the rules of a balanced relationship in which everyone will win." Europe naturally needs to maintain its own relations with China, but in the long term, we may be witnessing the slow erosion of American hegemony in the world.
Five things to consider before putting Oprah in the Oval Office
Someone can be inspiring, decent, interesting, and popular. That doesn't mean we ought to hire them to be President. There really are different skills required to be President than what can gain a person commercial success.
Milt Rosenberg, a true radio icon, has died
Milt Rosenberg's show was consistently both intelligent and entertaining. He proved that truly smart talk could be must-listen radio.
Why is this particular corruption of the English language so satisfying? Is it because it conveys urgency through its rule-breaking?
Honda's US footprint in a generation
Realizing that the company has only been in the United States for a generation, it's pretty remarkable just how far it reaches
A beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright home sells in Chicagoland
What's truly impressive is just how good the home still looks at more than a century old. The Prairie Style is profoundly enduring.
January 9, 2018
Deportation looms for more than 320,000 people
The US government has provided "Temporary Protected Status" to people from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Sudan as a form of what is basically refugee relief. It's hard to imagine how returning more than a quarter of a million Salvadorans to a deeply troubled homeland. The State Department tells Americans to "reconsider travel" there -- the last level of advisory before "Do Not Travel". Putting substantial strain on Central American countries that can't handle the pressure certainly isn't a way to introduce stability there, which likely only makes conditions worse for Mexico.
More than a dozen people killed by California mudslides
With vegetation wiped out by wildfires, there's not a lot left to keep heavy rain from turning the ground into mud
Fitbit data tells us a whole lot more than we've ever really known about how people actually sleep
Omaha developer wants to go back to the future
Or something like that, with old-style buildings in new construction. They would include buildings intended for mixed residential and commercial use -- but one big question looms: If developers are really going to push for new-build live/work spaces, what's going to sustain the relationship? Most business sectors are going to face consolidation and change, so merging living and working spaces with the old model of the "apartment over the shop" is really harder to justify than ever.
Alabama will get huge new Toyota/Mazda plant
Not a huge surprise, given Toyota's previous pattern of site selection
Should we have a completely ceremonial head of state?
When times are good, perhaps we'd pick a happy figure -- an Oprah Winfrey or a Johnny Carson or a John Elway. And when people are angry, like many are now, we could handle putting a hothead in the spot to express the popular discontent.
Matt Novak: "It was admittedly an odd choice for The Post to just be 110 minutes of Tom Hanks staring at the camera and whispering 'journalism' while getting more and more drunk but honestly it works". Any reasonable person would totally watch this.
