Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - March 30, 2019
Please note: These show notes may be in various stages of completion -- ranging from brainstormed notes through to well-polished monologues. Please excuse anything that may seem rough around the edges, as it may only be a first draft of a thought and not be fully representative of what was said on the air.
Breaking news to watch
- Iowa Hawkeye women advance to Elite 8 -- next game on Monday at 6pm
- Fred Hoiberg has been named the next head coach of Nebraska men's basketball
Segment 1: (11 min)
Segment 2: (8 min)
Segment 3: (14 min)
Totally Unnecessary Debate of the Day
Phooey to all this nonsense about there being a problem with the pace of baseball. At its heart, baseball is totally different from football, soccer, basketball, and hockey. That it is paced around giving each side a turn is a feature, not a bug. Baseball is a companionship sport. You get to enjoy it 162 times a year. You don't have to give all your attention to it; it doesn't want your attention like football does.
Baseball is a companionship sport
Phooey to all this nonsense about there being a problem with the pace of baseball. At its heart, baseball is totally different from football, soccer, basketball, and hockey. That baseball is paced around giving each side a turn is a feature, not a bug. It is a companionship game -- something worth indulging (especially by radio) 162 days a year. It doesn't, and shouldn't, demand a person's full and unrelenting attention for every moment of every game.
Totally Unnecessary Debate of the Day:
— Brian Gongol Show (@briangongolshow) March 29, 2019
Baseball is back. What do you think about the designated hitter (DH)?
Last week's poll
Totally Unnecessary Debate of the Day:
— Brian Gongol Show (@briangongolshow) March 23, 2019
Suppose we're going to name something after you. What do you want it to be?
Segment 4: (5 min)
Contrary to popular opinion
The inconvenient truth of high-speed rail in America
Our population density is a fraction of what is found in places with good passenger rail service. Many of us have sympathetic feelings in favor of a modernized, high-speed rail system. But we're just spread much too thin in America to make the same economics work. Compare the density of places with impressive high-speed rail service -- like Italy (206 people per square kilometer, or about 533 people per square mile), Germany (237 people/sq km), or Japan (348 people/sq km) -- with that of the United States: 36 people/sq km. There are parts of the country where we are more densely packed, for sure, but broadly the United States is much, much more spread-out than the rest of the countries we often consider as technological and economic peers. For the economics to work out comparably with those peers, we would have to be able to build and maintain the infrastructure for 1/5th the cost of theirs.
Segment 5: (11 min)
Technology Three | The week in technology
You didn't mean to keep that, did you?
Facebook's archives are turning unreliable, according to a Business Insider report. If you want to save content you've ever posted online, don't trust third parties.
What's with all the robocalls?
An industry insider says a combination of technological tricks and poor regulatory oversight has led to an insufferable deluge of calls to many American numbers
The moral of the story: Beware, always
Segment 6: (8 min)
Segment 7: (14 min)
Your role in cyberwar
Don't underestimate how hard China is mining social media accounts for espionage purposes.
- Britain isn't Iowa's biggest trading partner
- But it is Iowa's biggest foreign employer
- They were supposed to leave the EU yesterday, and it didn't happen
- Prime Minister Theresa May is almost certainly out of a job sooner rather than later
- But first, they have to come back for a FOURTH time to ask Parliament how to get out
- The problem is that nobody answered the question "And then what happens?"
- I understand the instinct to resent the idea of being "told what to do" by remote bureaucrats and politicians
- Their resentment of "Brussels" is probably twice the average American's resentment of "Washington"
- But instincts aren't enough in life. Instincts have to be tempered by facts and experience and knowledge.
- It seems a little uncharacteristic of Britain to have taken a dive head-long out of the EU without a plan for "and then what happens?"
- After all, they're known for techniques like harm mitigation -- something we could learn a lot better here in the US
- Harm mitigation -- knowing that bad things are going to happen, but seeking the route by which they can cause the least distress and damage -- so, techniques like clean needles for intravenous drug users
- How could the country known for loving harm mitigation just crash out of a system like the EU without a plan?
- We're not immune to the same kind of short-sightedness
- People pushing to abolish the Electoral College don't have any idea what would come next
- The Electoral College acts to compartmentalize a contaminated vote
- What if every election came down to disputing every ballot, just like we saw in Florida in 2000?
- We know a bunch of states were under cyberattack in the run-up to 2016
- We know the adversaries haven't stood down, and won't
- Security starts with a framework that can handle trouble -- and the Federal system is vastly more robust than a national system. And the Electoral College is indispensable to a Federal mindset.
- And yet...here we are. It's not quite Brexit, but we haven't answered some important questions...
- Three months without a Secretary of Defense
- Linda MacMahon is leaving as SBA head
- One of these things is a whole lot more important than the other
- But tossing out the Secretary of Defense without a plan is the same (in nature, if not in exact character) as tossing out the Electoral College and going to a national popular vote
- And looking to junk NAFTA and replace it with the USMCA is incomplete, too -- ask Chuck Grassley
The moral of the story: The most important question isn't "Should we get rid of things we don't like?", it's "And then, what happens next?"
Segment 8: (5 min)
- Eagle Grove
- New Prestage Farms pork-processing plant
- Billboards up -- advertising new jobs
- Billboards also emphasize "state of the art" equipment, other non-money factors
- Funny thing: There's a billboard for Tyson closer to town
- Tyson is recruiting for jobs in Storm Lake
- Storm Lake is about 75 miles away
- Maximum freedom of movement for money, goods, people, and ideas
- If you're going to restrict any of those, it needs to come with a prior explanation
- Optimal outcomes happen when you make more people better off without making anyone worse off
The moral of the story:
The moral of the story:
Unsorted and leftovers:
Russian police raid opposition-party headquarters
Per the Khodorkovsky Center: "They'd received an anonymous call about the 'distribution of extremist literature'. This is spookily reminiscent of the KGB raids on Samizdat houses."
This week
A million wells are threatened
Per CNN: "The National Ground Water Association estimates that people living in more than 300 counties across 10 states have their groundwater threatened from bacterial and industrial contamination carried by flood waters." It's impossible to participate normally in modern American life if you don't have clean running water.
By the numbers
The inconvenient truth of high-speed rail in America
Our population density is a fraction of what is found in places with good passenger rail service. Many of us have sympathetic feelings in favor of a modernized, high-speed rail system. But we're just spread much too thin in America to make the same economics work. Compare the density of places with impressive high-speed rail service -- like Italy (206 people per square kilometer, or about 533 people per square mile), Germany (237 people/sq km), or Japan (348 people/sq km) -- with that of the United States: 36 people/sq km. There are parts of the country where we are more densely packed, for sure, but broadly the United States is much, much more spread-out than the rest of the countries we often consider as technological and economic peers. For the economics to work out comparably with those peers, we would have to be able to build and maintain the infrastructure for 1/5th the cost of theirs.
Make money
Have fun
...setting up a streaming media profile completely from scratch that you can share as a couple when you're both in the same room, so as not to destroy the algorithms behind either partner's individual profile. It's basically the new "We're moving in together". (This advice could save a marriage).
Clean up after yourself
Mind your business
Someone tell the President: "Easy money" is the same as a "weak dollar"
His Twitter attack on the Federal Reserve for its policy of rate increases illustrates that he is guided by instincts alone on critical matters like economics -- where instincts are not enough. If someone were to tell him his policy is a "weak dollar" policy, he would undoubtedly do an about-face.
Quote of the Week
Without protections for minority interests, government is just anarchy dressed up in fancy clothes
Words from James Madison: "In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger"
Iowa news
Hyperbole is going to kill us all
21st Century conservatism
Curiosity, competence, and humility
Servicemembers shouldn't be political props
The chief of Australia's Defense Force made a point of having his people step out of sight when a government event turned political. Three cheers for that.
Have a little empathy
A million wells are threatened
Per CNN: "The National Ground Water Association estimates that people living in more than 300 counties across 10 states have their groundwater threatened from bacterial and industrial contamination carried by flood waters." It's impossible to participate normally in modern American life if you don't have clean running water.
Inbox zero
Stop the deliberate ignorance
Tin Foil Hat Award
Russian police raid opposition-party headquarters
Per the Khodorkovsky Center: "They'd received an anonymous call about the 'distribution of extremist literature'. This is spookily reminiscent of the KGB raids on Samizdat houses."
Yay Capitalism Prize
Capitalist solution of the week
Kickers
Fact: There are pretty much a thousand places you can watch people working out on video, from some of the lesser ESPN channels to old Tae-Bo infomercials. You don't need to be creepy and weird about recording other people in the real world around you. https://t.co/NDzESc4kjK
— Brian Gongol (@briangongol) March 28, 2019
I just ate Long John Silver's AND put the leftovers in the fridge.
— Brian Gongol (@briangongol) March 30, 2019
Catholic guilt level: 100
One year ago
Five years ago
Ten years ago
Programming notes
Justin Brady -- Today from 4-6pm CT: the author of Georgia's #LIFEact will discuss the final obstacle & the founder of http://Ancestry.com discusses race and what happened when a user discovered their families disturbing history.
TONIGHT: Your Iowa Barnstormers are 3 and 0 and playing in Cedar Rapids!
-Joe Stasi has all the action starting at 6:35pm on 1040 WHO and the iHeartRadio APP!
STARTING MONDAY: your shot at $1,000 in KEYWORD FOR CASH!
-up to sixteen chances every weekday
-listen for the keyword for the hour and text it at ‘200 200’
Live read: iHeartRadio app
iHeartRadio app
Live read: Contests
Live read: Smart speakers (hour 1)
Smart speakers
Live read: Smart speakers (hour 2)
Smart speakers
Calendar events to highlight
Recap
♫ Listen to the full episode from March 30, 2019 here
Segments 1 and 2 were preempted. Sorry; they don't exist!
③ Segment 3: Baseball season is back, so our Totally Unnecessary Debate of the Day is "What do you think about the designated hitter?"
④ Segment 4: Like a lot of people, I am emotionally attached to the lure of high-speed rail. I've ridden the trains in Europe, and in my heart, I'd love to see them in the USA. But that doesn't make them economically sound: We just don't have the population density to make them work.
⑤ Segment 5: There's yet more flooding season yet to come. Beware and prepare.
⑥ Segment 6: Lyft's IPO, Facebook's memory hole, and robocalls galore. The Technology Three for this week give you lots of reasons to "caveat emptor". In particular, check out the expletive-filled but educational Twitter rant of a call center operator who explains why we get so many junk calls these days.
⑦ Segment 7: Brexit, the Electoral College, and the big question nobody likes to answer, but should -- "And what happens next?"
⑧ Segment 8: If you want to halt the free movement of goods, money, people, or ideas, then it's incumbent on you to explain why it's absolutely necessary. Otherwise, you're just standing in the way of the free flow of things that generally ought to flow freely.