The Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio
Brian Gongol


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The National Weather Service office here in the Des Moines area put out a survey of past State Fair weather, and they noted that we've only had one State Fair week during which temperatures actually exceeded 100°. That's surprising to those of us who have been to decades' worth of fairs and remember roasting at many of them, but the facts are the facts.

Given the way it's been trying to push around the neighboring nation of Georgia, some folks think that Russia is acting like a big business with nuclear weapons. The essence of the argument is that Russia's government and influential people close to it are making so much money by selling energy that the cuontry is going to use every tool at its disposal to ensure that the money keeps coming in -- even if that includes warfare. That's not a good state of affairs for the rest of the world.

Why a person would want to build his own telegraph receiver and connect it to the Internet is beyond me, but it's pretty funny when it happens.

There's talk of introducing a scholarship-based incentive program for kids at the alternative high school in Des Moines. It's a great idea on one hand: People respond to incentives, and if kids have been slow to do their best at school, then an incentive system might be what the doctor ordered. But the fact that there are so many kids who are having trouble finding the intrinsic motivation to do well in school is itself a really bad sign. One caller suggested a book on the subject of incentives and education that might be of interest. It's appropriate that we should talk about this subject as Marvin Pomerantz is laid to rest; his emphasis on education as a path to self-betterment is fully appropriate.

Good news: Thanks to market demand, 94% of Iowa communities now have access to high-speed Internet access. That's great news for our state.

The family that lost its free $450,000 house to foreclosure is probably a case study in the unfortunate degree of financial illiteracy we have in this country.

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