Brian Gongol
New York City exports its homeless
Literally: The city buys one-way plane tickets for homeless families to leave town. A relative in the receiving town has to agree to take them in, so it's perhaps not as nefarious a plot as it sounds at first.
Study says obesity-related spending is 9.1% of all American medical care
That's a huge amount for a condition that, with some exceptions, is mostly a behavioral problem. And if we're going to be thrust into what could become a single-payer health-care system, the impact of what's mostly a preventable condition can't be overlooked. The President said on the campaign trail that his ideal health-care system would probably be a single-payer plan. But if government is that single payer, how will it contain the costs of obesity without mandating what we can and cannot eat, or how often we exercise? Overlooking a category accountable for almost a tenth of expenses would be irresponsible -- but government's usual approach to these things, like bans on trans fats, are imprecise and overbearing. Any useful health-care reform must ensure that some kind of market-feedback mechanism exists, so that individuals have incentives to avoid (mostly) preventable conditions like obesity whenever they can.
What an in-flight safety video performed by nude flight attendants can teach radio broadcasters
Newspapers delivered via radio
Tried in the 1930s, but abandoned
Closed-circuit TV cameras follow people in London more than anywhere else in the world
How to fight a fire when there's no water around
