Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - December 27, 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
Segment 1: (11 min)
How are you feeling? | Michael Craig | CDC senior adviser on antibiotic resistance
NIH | CDC | BBC | CNN | WebMD | Harvard
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2019 AR Threats Report
- "Antibiotic-resistant bacteria and fungi cause more than 2.8 million infections and 35,000 deaths in the United States each year"
- "The list of 18 germs includes two new urgent threats"
- "Three additional germs that have yet to spread resistance widely in the United States, but that CDC and other public health experts closely monitor"
- "Resistance to essential antibiotics is increasing in seven of the 18 germs"
- 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections each year
- 35,000 deaths each year
- Plus 12,800 deaths from "Clostridioides difficile" (C. difficile)
Successes:
- Hospitals doing better on devices and procedures
- Vaccines in the population rather than antibiotics
- Tracking of emerging threats
- Safe food handling
- Monitoring at-risk populations
Threats:
- Diseases spreading in non-hospital settings
- Threats in the food supply
- Threats entering from abroad
- Animal diseases
- Unsafe sex
Segment 2: (8 min)
Totally Unnecessary Debate of the Day
Totally Unnecessary Debate of the Day™:
— Brian Gongol Show (@briangongolshow) December 26, 2019
Which of these would have been the best "Episode 9" if its franchise had lasted that long?
TBQH, if I had to pick a franchise to extend ad infinitum, I'd rather be watching "Back to the Future 9".
— Brian Gongol (@briangongol) December 24, 2019
Or maybe "Ferris Bueller's 9th Day Off". https://t.co/CM0ULY7Y8P
Totally Unnecessary Debate of the Day™:
— Brian Gongol Show (@briangongolshow) December 21, 2019
Segment 3: (14 min)
Your role in cyberwar
"Would Alexa blackmail me if I ran for office?"
Defense Department to servicemembers: Skip the DNA tests, please
Yahoo News says a Pentagon-issued memo says the consumer DNA kits "could expose personal and genetic information, and potentially create unintended security consequences and increased risk". They're not wrong about that.
US Cyber Command cocks the pistol but pauses before pulling the trigger
Cyber Command chief Gen. Paul Nakasone: "We can't let up. This is something we cannot be episodic about. The defense of our nation, the defense of our elections, is something that will be every single day for as long as I can see into the future."
US armed forces try to figure out social media in a new battleground
TikTok, for instance, is a tool that may be very useful for recruiters trying to reach a young audience. But it's also probably a huge security threat, given its murky origins in China -- a known cyber-adversary of our own military. What's nutty is that the US will soon have a "Space Force" as a dedicated military branch, but not a "Cyber Force". Cyberspace is the site of ongoing, never-ending hostilities. Space is an obvious extension of an Air Force mission far more than cyber is an extension of any existing branch. Cyber Force should have come before a Space Force. New battleground, new rules; not to mention a vast need for new training, new strategies and tactics, new recruitment, even a new military academy.
The longer we take to name the problem, the farther behind we are going to fall. It's not even appropriate to call cyberspace the "battleground of the future". It's the battleground of right now. The Defense Department deserves credit for establishing a unified Cyber Command, but that doesn't go far enough. It needs to become a permanent, separate branch of operations, complete with its own rules of engagement, its own philosophy, its own leadership structure, and even its own service academy. Just on the basis of the required skill sets alone, we need an organizational structure that can and will accommodate the need to cross-pollinate with the private sector, as well as with other government agencies and NGOs, to ensure that the necessary self-defense skills get to where they are needed.
The moral of the story: More than anywhere else, we need a "militia" sensibility when it comes to cyberwarfare.
Segment 4: (5 min)
Website reminder
WHORadio.com: Information on the 12 applicants for the Iowa Supreme Court
Have fun
Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn announces engagement she initiated
Is it "non-traditional" for a woman to propose to a man? Maybe. But: If the time and the relationship are both right, then both partners ought to be thinking the same thing anyway. Good for these two.
The moral of the story: Maybe it unsettles you, but I'm enthusiastically for this kind of development if it signals real equality in a relationship.
Segment 5: (11 min)
Impeachment (Part 1) | Adam White | American Enterprise Institute and Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University
Segment 6: (8 min)
Impeachment (Part 2) | Adam White | American Enterprise Institute and Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University
Segment 7: (14 min)
Impeachment (Part 3) | Adam White | American Enterprise Institute and Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University
Stray thoughts:
- It's harder to get Senators to do their duty when they're directly-elected rather than legislature-appointed
- Maybe we should just have a mandatory popular recall election for the President at the 2-year mark of every term, in exchange for keeping the Electoral College in place (I am very much opposed to a National Popular Vote, but less opposed to a National Popular Recall)
Segment 8: (5 min)
Is it the coming of a new decade already?
A whole new generation of young people have never experienced the joy of the pedantic arguments over whether a year ending in "0" is the first or the last of a decade. Gather 'round, children, and let us tell you about the holdouts who refused to celebrate New Year's Eve Y2K like it was 1999.
Backup material:
Make money
Economist | Fast Co | WSJ | CB
Amtrak leadership wants to change the railroad
Who needs long-haul routes when airplanes are much faster? But America really could use swift point-to-point rail service, between cities of certain population levels and economical distances.
Have fun
Simone Biles named AP Female Athlete of the Year
But why stop at "female"? She's so good that the authorities in gymnastics aren't even sure how to score her. Oughtn't that make her a shoo-in for best athlete of the year, period?
Clean up after yourself
CIA undermined a vaccination campaign to hunt for Bin Laden
Credibility is difficult to measure, unbelievably fragile, and almost unfathomably valuable.
Mind your business
Five airports may have been sites of measles transmissions in December
O'Hare, Richmond, Austin, DIA, and LAX may all have been sites where infected travelers passed through
Contrary to popular opinion
Refugee doctor proves a necessary point
Refugees aren't helpless. They're just people -- with skills and talents, just like everyone else -- who have been forced out of their homes. If only we could correct the narrative here in the United States and resume seeing them for who they are.
21st Century conservatism
A non-traditional student finds his classmates aren't all that (snow-)flaky
James Hatch: "To me there is no dishonor in being wrong and learning. There is dishonor in willful ignorance and there is dishonor in disrespect." He echoes Benjamin Franklin ("Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn") and Charlie Munger ("If we hadn't been so good at removing our ignorance step by step, we would be a fraction of ourselves today...We're very good at ignorance-removal, and fortunately for us, we have a lot more ignorance to remove."). It's really quite wise to know we don't know everything.
Have a little empathy
The Wall Street Journal says that Huawei is the beneficiary of $75 billion in government support from China. There's a pretty good chance that's true, despite Huawei's protestations to the contrary.
A message from prisoners in China
It's not a message in a bottle, but perhaps the next-closest thing: A note found in a Christmas card, apparently inserted by prisoners being forced to work in a Chinese factory. Material prosperity is only good if it helps to preserve and expand the security of basic human rights and freedoms -- not if it's traded as a substitute for them, which is the model being employed by China. Gilded authoritarianism is authoritarianism nonetheless.
Unsorted and leftovers:
This week
Two parallel Democratic primaries
Nate Silver: "What's really going on is that there's been an extremely stable primary among the 60% of Democrats who did not graduate from 4-year colleges and mostly love Biden/Bernie, and then a relatively volatile one among the 40% who did graduate college, and the media only covers the 40%." But also note that part of the volatility probably comes from people who are watching tone more than policy, which means that changes can be amplified day-to-day or week-to-week much more than by the rollout of some new policy book. It's easy to disrupt the perceptions of a candidate's tone rather quickly, for better or worse.
"Deep state" or just the non-partisan civil service?
A nonpartisan civil service definitely beats having James Garfield shot to death in a train station.
Not everyone finds joy in the holidays
And the rest of us should be sensitive to that reality, and listen to others
Moderate earthquakes off the Pacific Northwest coast
Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver are all in a region where the threat of a giant earthquake ought to have people at sustained attention
Fascinating satellite imagery from 2019
The titanic steps forward in the quality of weather-satellite imagery really pop when you see just how vivid the pictures of major storms (like hurricanes) have become
Hot (social) topics
Google Trends | Yahoo | Y-today | Yahoo Buzz | MSN | MSN UK | Alexa | Delicio | Lycos | Technorati | AOL | Google | Dogpile | Ask (wkly) | CBS | Bloglines | NYTLede | Twitter
Kickers
I thought he was breaking rocks, not signing them. https://t.co/rluQ5m3FiZ
— Brian Gongol (@briangongol) December 25, 2019
One thing it won't be: A John Bolton swimsuit calendar. https://t.co/uMo34bfWc9
— Brian Gongol (@briangongol) December 23, 2019
Programming notes
FRIDAY:
3pm-5pm: Special pregame edition of Jethro's BBQ SoundOFF! (Travis and Ross are LIVE at Jethro's Bacon Bacon in WDM on 22nd Street, just off I-235)
5pm-7pm: Hawkeye pregame **THIS WILL BE ON THE iHEART RADIO APP!**
7pm-12mid: Iowa vs. USC (Holiday Bowl in San Diego) **THIS WILL BE ON THE iHEART RADIO APP!**
12mid to 1am: Jethros BBQ SoundOFF (postgame edition, in-studio)
SATURDAY:
12:45pm-1pm: Hawkeye Pregame
1pm-3:30pm: Iowa WBB at Nebraska
SUNDAY:
2pm-3pm: Hawkeye Pregame
3pm-5pm: Iowa MBB vs. Kennesaw State
Live read: iHeartRadio app
iHeartRadio app
Live read: Smart speakers (hour 1)
Smart speakers
Live read: Smart speakers (hour 2)
Smart speakers
Recap
Notes from the episode that aired on December 27, 2019
🎧Listen to the full episode from December 27, 2019 here🎧
Segments 1 & 2 🎧 | Michael Craig is the CDC's senior adviser on antibiotic resistance. He says the CDC's freshest research says drug-resistant germs are killing 35,000 Americans a year, and there's much more you and I can be doing to protect ourselves and our families.
Segments 3 & 4 🎧 | Totally Unnecessary Debate of the Day: Which movie franchise should have made it to Episode 9? And: The government is spinning up a Space Force, but why not a Cyber Force? The need is permanent, the battleground is all around us, and if space is worthy of a dedicated branch (and not just a command), isn't cyberspace? My take: More than anywhere else, we need a "militia" sensibility when it comes to cyberwarfare.
Segments 5, 6, and 7 🎧 | Adam White is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University (and also, an Iowan!). He's written a deep piece for the National Review on "The Senate's Trial". We dig into the question of how to go down the path of an impeachment trial when it's only been done a couple of times before.
Segment 8 | Lindsey Vonn is getting hitched, and she's the one who popped the question to her boyfriend. If the time and the relationship are both right, then both partners ought to be thinking the same thing anyway. Good for these two.