Brian Gongol
Graphic of the day: Breaking the Sound Barrier
"Critical" fire weather threatens western US
No more "business" majors at UIUC
The university will require all business majors to pick from management, marketing, supply-chain management, business process management, and information systems/IT. The irony of most business education, though, is that it rarely teaches students how to be smart about the whole picture. Business schools need more emphasis on growing small businesses and less on how to function as a cog in a large corporate machine.
Quake kills at least 450 in Peru
Earthquakes are almost always more deadly in poor countries than in rich ones
London gets the New Orleans treatment in disaster flick
The movie, "Flood", surmises a hurricane-like storm and high tide simultaneously wiping out most of the city. The UK's environmental agency says the notion is ridiculous, but they're not above using it to attract public attention for their project to improve flooding defenses along the Thames.
Gulfstream wants to make supersonic business jets
Their main hurdle is the sonic boom, which tends to anger the neighbors. So they're trying to promote an adaptation called the quiet spike, which is basically a long rod that protrudes from the aircraft's nose, thus reducing the overall effect of breaking the sound barrier.
The costs of prevention
Essay assesses the value of preventative health care -- and whether it really saves money, or simply delays when it has to be spent. While it's likely that we can spend almost as much money preventing health-care problems as treating them, it should also be observed that if improved health care leads to greater useful longevity, that would also give us much more time over which to recoup the total cost of care. That is, a person who lives to age 90 via preventative care might spend as much over a lifetime as one who spends only on emergency care and lives to age 70, but by spreading the costs out over an extra 20 years, both the individual and society can benefit. The individual gets to spend more time living, and society (potentially) gains from the additional wisdom and experience that the 90-year-old can share. If we could get an extra 20 years out of a genius like Norman Borlaug, that's worth just about whatever preventative care it takes to get him there. Moreover, it should be noted that just because preventative care appears expensive doesn't mean it's not useful. What we should focus on is how to bring the cost of preventative care down -- while increasing the amount of it people consume. Related: The way the government doles out Medicare dollars is another perfectly good example of why we need to address the problem.
Behavioral screening comes to US airport security
