Saturday, December 3, 2011

Good News Tabs

The bomb in Obamacare: A blog post from Forbes, of all places, noting that today is the beginning of the most important change caused by the new health care law: the requirement that all for-profit insurers spend at least 80-85 percent of premiums on health care for their customers, rather than on overhead like marketing and sales. The writer, Rick Ungar, is skeptical that insurance companies will be able to do this while maintaining the profit margins they've come to expect, and that it will lead to a single-payer system.

Beyond beer-battered fish: A guy is planning to use the old Hamm's Brewery on the east side of St. Paul as an indoor fish farm, on the model of Growing Power in Milwaukee. Tilapia (and later trout), with lettuce, basil, and other greens growing above the tanks.

Regrets only: Journalist Kathryn Schulz gives a TED talk (video) about the value of regret. One point she makes is that regret is generally only studied within the field of behavioral economics, mostly examining it in the context of financial decisions. But people list financial regret as only a minor part of their experience (3 percent of the time), while things like education, career, and romantic decisions loom as the largest moments of regret. Yet no one studies those things.

If you've got some time on your hands and you're stuck near a computer, there's not much better you can do than look for TED talks that interest you. Or the Big Think -- that site is amazing.

2 comments:

Ms Sparrow said...

You are such a great resource for news that I would otherwise miss.
I really appreciate you and your informative blog!

Daughter Number Three said...

Thank you, Ms. Sparrow.