Bees Attack the Queen - Have a Last Laugh

Looking at a garland, a swarm of honey bees thought they were going to have a field day. But the garland was made of worthless money: at-least to the bees. Realizing that they had been fooled and in a fit of rage, they decided to attack the Queen herself, when she was addressing her loyal subjects.

But little did the bees realize that the power of the Queen can stretch far beyond the human world. With the full force of an army of her cronies, the Queen is attacking back. And she will not rest until she finds out why the bees dared to attack her. As for the cost of this unnecessary war, it will be up-to the human subjects to bear the burden. When mutli crore's were spent on the garland that started the war, who cares about another few crore's.

The bees, which are such resourceful creatures, must be having a last laugh at the stupidity and dissipation of the human subjects.

Today is π Day

March 14th or (3-14) is π day. And as usual, Google has a doodle celebrating this ever mysterious number. For starters π is a irrational number and does not seem to have an end. On last check, π was calculated out to a record 2.7 trillion places. Also there is no pattern which has been discerned about how the digits seem to repeat.



Image Source: Google
For more interesting π facts, check out The Joy of π

Random Musings of The Week

Its time again for a post on some interesting articles that I read this past week.

First, lets starts with the most important topic of discussion: Healthcare. Every body keeps talking about the rising healthcare costs. The debate in Washington to overhaul the healthcare system has been centered on two issues: Making sure that everybody who is eligible can buy health insurance and how do you control the out of control healthcare costs. When it comes to cost, one of the drivers that is often overlooked is the rate of hospital acquired infection. They add significant cost to the overall care of the patients. Yet preventing them does not take rocket science. Its as simple as providers washing their hands before a procedure, or touching a patient etc. Read an interesting conversation with one of the Physicians leaders who is spearheading efforts to reduce rates of hospital acquired infections.

The second article is also about reducing cost of healthcare. Its an idea (though I admit its far more radical just washing your hands) that is being considered by one of the lawmakers in the state of Vermont. If this lawmaker has his way and can muster enough support in the legislature, then hospitals would be banned from advertising their services to consumers.

This third article is about the role of the media, in an age where information can travel as fast as the thought process itself. And when information travels so fast, how does an individual know if the information has been filtered for its accuracy and whether it can be trusted. This conversation between Fareed Zakaria and Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, reminded me of the infamous death panels. Eric Schmidt hits the nail on the head when he says:

We're in a situation where we're going from a model where everything you saw was true and was highly metered -- that is, highly controlled -- to an explosion of information where not everything you see is true. And it's very difficult for humans to sort out what's true and what's false.
This will be the bane of politicians. It will be the bane of people like yourself, people everywhere. How do I know that this is true?
And the problem gets worse with real-time information and the fact that people are willing to say things that aren't true, and so forth and so on.

Check out my other Random Musing posts 1,2,3, 4

Want to See a Doctor - How Much Will it Cost?

If you want to buy something in the market place, you look for the product and you know exactly how much it is going to set you back. Various factors go into how the price is set. The chief among them is competition among various sellers.

But when it comes to healthcare, nobody knows what it is going to cost for a doctors visit, an X-Ray, MRI etc. Neither is there any information available on what the various doctors will charge for the same test/procedure. Why is it that the price of a gallon of milk can be found by the click of a button, it is so difficult to find the true cost of seeing a doctor for your illness?

Well, there is a bill in the US Congress called "Transparency in All Health Care Pricing Act of 2010", which plans to take the first step in developing a transparent pricing for healthcare costs.

Read more about the bill at Transparency in All Health Care Pricing Act of 2010

Also read a similar post Could Price Tags Save American Health Care

Just on a side note: If you are in France and need to see a doctor, you will know exactly how much the doctor will charge you for a particular test. If you want to find out more about the French, Germany, Japanese, UK or the Canadian health care system and how they are run, check out the excellent book The Healing of America

Random Musings of The Week

I found some interesting articles and blogs over the course of my countless hours spent on the web last week. Below is a short list:

New Yorker Magazine had a pretty good article on Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman

For those of us who have seen Avatar, this seems like life imitating art.

For those of us who are mathematically challenged, or who want to make math more fun and meaningful, this blog by Steven Strogatz, an Applied Mathematics professor at Cornell University is much fun to read.

Vancouver Winter Olympics are over. During the course of my limited viewing of the competition, I was always wondering if the figure skaters ever felt dizzy with all the spinning that they do during the course of their routine. Well I was glad and somebody else was thinking on the same line. And the answer is rather mundane then I thought.

Check Random Musings for older articles.