Whatever happens in Ukraine, if Putin thinks he has won, Russia will have lost.

Gauthier Toulemonde was fed up with his commute, so he decided to start teleworking this fall. The decision was unremarkable by itself—telework is gaining momentum as people around the world are starting to realize that that odious daily chore of traveling to and from the office isn’t always necessary. So why focus on Toulemonde? Because he chose to telework from a desert island.

Two recent polls paint widely varying pictures about whether Gen Yers are likely to sign up for insurance, showing the dangers of expressing confidence about expected public action based on surveys, especially in a system as complex as US health care.

We have a problem, but we can’t see it clearly because our focus too often discounts history.

Among the ESA’s many stakeholders, a consensus is forming that the law cannot accomplish its goals without greater reliance on markets. And in Texas, the outlines of just such a market-based approach are coming into focus.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is working hard these days to reassure jittery allies in Gulf that the US still has their back. It appears that the shock, rage and horror from long time allies about the administration’s negotiations with Iran has concentrated some minds in the US government. The White House does not have total freedom to make any deal it likes with Iran.

A Japanese company thought way, way beyond the box with this idea: putting a ring of solar panels around the moon’s equator and beaming that energy back down to earth. This idea is much more fiction than it is science, but dreams like this one may be achieved sooner than we might expect.

The US could save anywhere from 1 to 8.5 billion dollars a year by reducing the inefficiencies in hospital waiting rooms. This is an example of the kind of expensive defects in our health care system that aren’t even really on most people’s policy radars, but few reforms will be really achievable until we can a handle on the waste and inefficiencies currently making the system expensive and dysfunctional.

A new report on the Vatican Bank shows a church, and a Pope, on the move, but with much left still to do.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is coming down heavily on the side of a “strategic partnership” with Russia, but without aid from China, Putin may have to buy Ukraine on his own.