Why air travel sucks – an answer from Big Air. An insider talks about why air travel sucks, and how it will change as fuel prices go up. “So what’s going to happen? Fewer flights, higher fares, emptier planes (yeah, fares are going to drive down demand, not consolidate fullish flights onto each other), fewer air traffic delays. In short, the fuel price will accomplish just about everything that reregulation could hope to do. It’s exactly the same reasoning as why anyone concerned about climate change needs to see $5/gallon gas in the US and cheer, because it’s the only way to change consumer behavior.” — Christopher Hayes

They know what’s in your medicine cabinet. That prescription you just picked up at the drugstore could hurt your chances of getting health insurance. An untold number of people have been rejected for medical coverage for a reason they never could have guessed: Insurance companies are using huge, commercially available prescription databases to screen out applicants based on their drug purchases. — Business Week

How to do business with a blacklisted Russian arms company. We now know that the U.S. Army handed out a sole-sourced deal to sell nearly two dozen Russian Mi-17 helicopters to Iraq. But the lingering question is, how?– Wired

On morality of war, life imitates art. The last scene of Sydney Pollack’s 1975 film, Three Days of the Condor, has eerie relevance to current events. “Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?” Robert Redford’s Joseph Turner asks Cliff Robertson’s J. Higgins. A heated exchange ensues and Turner demands that the American people be consulted by their government regarding involvement in the region. “Ask them,” Turner insists, before deciding to hunt for oil abroad.
— Huffington Post