Posts Tagged: politics

Main — 1 Comment
8
Jan 10

How to Measure Health Care

National Geographic ran an interesting little tidbit about health care, and while I understand that health care as a whole is messy, complicated, and not working the way we all want it to, they do have a good way of narrowing it down to the basics: the annual costs of care (a nice easy number) and life expectancy (another nice easy number). This is certainly an oversimplification of the issue, but I think it gets to the heart of it. We value life, and want people to have a good life for as long as possible. We also value money – and want to spend as little of it as possible. Where these to items come together is where health care becomes political.

So anyway, NG did some analysis and found “The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. Lack of health insurance is a factor in life span and contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year.”

The chart is shocking:

6a00e0098226918833012876674340970c-800wi

Main — Comments Off
13
Nov 09

Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

Wired writes An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All:

“The rejection of hard-won knowledge is by no means a new phenomenon. In 1905, French mathematician and scientist Henri Poincaré said that the willingness to embrace pseudo-science flourished because people “know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether illusion is not more consoling.” [...] Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly. Being rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense.”

Main — Comments Off
26
Oct 09

The economy is causing unhappiness at work

The Economist on unhappiness at work:

“A survey by the Centre for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy, found that between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of employees who professed loyalty to their employers slumped from 95% to 39%; the number voicing trust in them fell from 79% to 22%.”

The article puts the primary blame on the poor economy, but also suggests that micro-measuring employees (how many times did you smile at a customer today?) and mixed messages about company loyalty play a significant role.

Bob Sutton discusses the data further. Particularly, he is interested in how companies will fare when the economy returns.

Main — Comments Off
25
Jul 09

IT Dashboard

This is a fascinating new site that really sheds some like on where all our federal spending is going. Check out the Government’s IT Dashboard. You can’t fix what you don’t measure!

Picture 1

Main — Comments Off
4
May 09

The Net Effect

From On The Media “The Net Effect“, Lee Rainie said:

“One of the surprising things we found in that survey was that those who are the most technologically adept and those who are the most engaged with information actually are not in the echo chamber pattern; they are actually seeking out and finding out more arguments opposed to their views than those who are less technologically adept and less interested in political information.”

Or perhaps another way to say it: those who are technologically adept tend to have more balanced viewpoints.

← Older Entries