U2 to Sell 360 Tour ‘Claws’

U2’s 360 Tour will come to an end July 30 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. But “The Claw” — the alien-like, four-legged structure over the stage — will live on.

After the record-setting two-year-plus 360 trek, U2’s management plans to sell off three of the full, four-legged, 29,000-square-foot steel structures as venues unto themselves.

“It’s certainly our intention to see these things recycled into permanent and usable ventures,” U2 tour director Craig Evans told Billboard.biz earlier this month. “It represents too great an engineering feat to just use for [the tour] and put away in a warehouse somewhere.”

Evans added that the U2 camp is “now in discussions to send them into different places around the world and have them installed as permanent venues. Some major events have shown interest in these, from four different continents — and we haven’t even really put the word out yet.”

Full Article

Posted in U2 | Comments Off on U2 to Sell 360 Tour ‘Claws’

Report: 5 Percent of People Account for Half of U.S. Health Care Spending

About 5 percent of the population is responsible for almost half of all health care spending in the United States and for rising premium rates, according to a new report from the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation.

U.S. health care spending has sharply increased over the past few years. Between 2005 and 2009, national health care spending rose by 23 percent from $2 billion to $2.5 billion, according to the NIHCM Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on health care. A foundation report that reviewed the 2008 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey found health care spending was concentrated among a small group of high-cost patients.

The report stated about half of the U.S. population accounted for only 3.1 percent of all expenditures. But 10 percent of the population hogged 63.6 percent of all health spending, the survey found. The top 5 percent of the population accounted for 47.5 percent of all spending, and the top 1 percent accounted for 20.2 percent.

Full Article

It looks like most of this could be prevented:

Nearly half of people in the top 5 percent of health care spending had high blood pressure; a third had high cholesterol; and a quarter had diabetes.

Posted in Interesting | 2 Comments

Real bullets were fired at Wild West show

Real bullets were fired at a Wild West shootout re-enactment in South Dakota that sent a South Connellsville optometrist, John Ellis, and two others to the hospital with gunshot-related injuries.

Investigators found live .45-caliber rounds and spent shells at the Dakota Wild Bunch Reinactors’ June 17 show in Hill City, S.D., said Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom.

The rounds were fired by re-enactor Paul Doering, 49, of Somerset, S.D., Sheriff Thom said.

Full Article

Posted in Goofy | Comments Off on Real bullets were fired at Wild West show

Drug

Posted in Goofy | Comments Off on Drug