Is Amazon a charity or an insurance product?

The geometry behind the Spaghetti Code sculpture.

Exposition of the Unique Games Conjectures for a general audience.

Black hole firewalls?

Excellent exposition of virtual Haken conjecture for general audience.

Hirsch's case for domain immersion for primary school and preschool vocabulary growth.

Life insurers make money on customers that lapse their policies and lose money on customers that keep their coverage.

To condition, or not to condition, that is the question.

The case for futarchy.

Medicare Advantage are generally more expensive, yet are increasingly popular and probably better quality than traditional Medicare. The most probably future of US health care is a cozy relationship between the state, healthcare providers, and insurers. I expect just about everyone will eventually have (more) heavily subsidized and (more) heavily regulated health insurance and health care, mediated mostly through private insurers and private health care providers, who constantly lobby to get a bigger piece of the pie in subtle ways.

The funny thing is that congressional Republicans mostly want to reform Medicare into a premium-support model, essentially turning Medicare into Obamacare for seniors. The difference is that the Republicans want to combine the reform with cuts by imposing caps on the growth rate of the subsidies for health insurance premiums. They better hope the Democrats don't ever say 'yes,' for the caps on growth rates would not survive very many election cycles.

Why you should be quite optimistic about the US economy. Nevertheless, there are urgent federal budget issues.

Biofuels and Hunger in Low-Income Countries