Various things smart people should know

Business reporters Alex Nussbaum and Meg Tirrell estimate the impact of no health care reform on the US.

One in five working-age Americans lacked health coverage during the first half of 2009, the highest in six years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a Dec. 16 report. Health-care spending last year reached an estimated $2.5 trillion, rising 6 percent from 2008, analysts with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in another paper, released Feb. 4 in the journal “Health Affairs.”

I was shocked to learn that my super-high deductible Aetna plan went up 25% in one year – and I haven’t visited a doctor in three years!

Here is an incredibly informative 90 minute lecture about the science of climate change.  I found that I watched the whole thing. (I recommend the slides on the same page too). Joe Romm interviewed each of the two scientists afterwards as well.

Here’s an outstanding video by Peter Sinclair about plugin hybrids.  Apparently, having cars recharge their batteries is very compatible with our current power grid. Why? It’s done offpeak at night, and this electric reserve from the car could theoretically be shifted to the household during peak times (when the local power company usually needs to resort to their dirtiest power generator). Fascinating stuff!

Garry Kasparov on chess.  Apparently the new thing is team matches (each consisting of 1 person and 1 computer).

A while back I blogged about the hilarious Charles Brooker media criticism TV show.  I didn’t realize that this came from a longer TV series on BBC (See here and here and here).