Business Rabbit Hole Report: Cavalcade of Risk #148

Welcome to the 148th edition of the Cavalcade of Risk!

For our readers who see our posts through sites that pick up its RSS news feed, the Cavalacade of Risk is a throwback to the early days of social media on the web, where individual bloggers (aka "the host") would solicit other bloggers to contribute posts to which they would link, usually related to a given theme (such as personal finance, or to use today's example, risk.)

In those old days, blog carnivals were a way that new or little known bloggers could attract more traffic to their sites. The bloggers who would host a particular carnival would change with every edition.

Today, blog carnivals are essentially obsolete - they've fully been replaced by what might be described as Social Media 3.0 - where sites like Facebook or Twitter rule in driving traffic to what people might find interesting to read.

Now, since it's fallen to us to host the 148th edition of the Cavalcade of Risk, we should point out that the risk of finding your endeavors becoming obsolete is a very real risk - we can't count the number of blog carnivals that have fallen by the wayside just because no-one thought they were worth continuing.

But the Cavalcade of Risk is a bit different - it has benefited from an organizing force in the form of Insureblog's Hank Stern, who has managed to make it last 148 editions.

Or 149, if you count the next edition, which will be hosted in two weeks time at the NotWithStanding blog!

But to get back to our contribution to this week's Cavalcade of Risk, having a solid organizing force behind an endeavor then is essential for sustaining it over the long term - thus, reducing the risk of obsolescence and having your endeavor fall by the wayside!

Now, onto the Cavalcade of Risk - all those who contributed posts for consideration to this 148th edition of the cavalcade are presented below for your reading pleasure!

Cavalcade of Risk #148

Date Contributed	Post Title	Blog Name	Rating	Remark
2012-01-03	How Much of Your Investment Portfolio Can You Afford to Lose?	Arbor Asset Allocation Model Portfolio	Bb2	Ken Faulkenberry argues that all investors need to have a plan for controlling their investment losses, as a way to avoid losing money!
2012-01-05	Insurance Regulation 2012: Reading the Tea Leaves	Insurance Regulatory Law	Bb2	Van R. Mayhall, III outlines the many ways that insurance regulation will dominate governmental affairs in 2012, particularly at the state level.
2012-01-05	Pollution Coverage in the New York Business Auto Policy	Ask Tim	Bb3	If you're a fuel dealer in New York state, Tim Dodge's contribution will be of special interest to you - for everyone else though, not so much! (Somebody needs to ask Tim more interesting questions....)
2012-01-05	The Year in Review: Weird Claims in 2011	Risk Management for the 21st Century	Aa2	Nancy Germond reviews the wacky year that was to identify the most unexpected risks that resulted in big settlements!
2012-01-05	Insurance Policies to Avoid at All Costs	Free Money Wisdom	Bb3	Jon the Saver really doesn't like three different kinds of insurance: extended warranties, credit card life insurance and ID theft insurance. That's pretty much it....
2012-01-06	Health, Risk and History	Insureblog	Bb2	Hank Stern points to a blog post at Frank Jacobs' wonderful Strange Maps blog, which features a map dividing 19th century American into medical insurance underwriting zones.
2012-01-07	The Ineffectiveness of Asset Testing for Public Health Insurance Eligibility	Colorado Health Insurance Insider	Bb2	Louise Norris protests against state legislators' attempts to apply means testing to Medicaid recipients, which would keep people with millions in assets, but not in the form of income, from drawing Medicaid benefits, arguing that the federal government's grants to the state prohibit the practice.
2012-01-08	Geographical Areas for Insurance Underwriting	Chatswood Consulting Limited	Ba2	Russell Hutchinson picks up on Hank Stern's map pointer, and reveals that what seems to be a strange concept from history to Hank in the U.S. is not so strange elsewhere in the world (and provides examples!)
2012-01-09	Health Wonk Review, OSHA, State Reports, and the Single Best Thing for Your Health	Workers' Comp Insider	Ab2	Julie Ferguson offers her own homemade blog carnival expansion for the Cavalcade of Risk, complete with links to a number of workers' comp-related links from around the web and blogosphere! And best of all, a video that describes the single best thing you can do for your health in 2012!

Say, What Are Those Ratings?

Blog Post Rating System for Blog Carnivals
Topicality [Capital Letter]	Information Quality [Small Letter]	Readability [Number]
A - Fully On Topic B - Related Topic C - Way Off Topic D - Spam	a - Makes You Smarter b - Makes You Informed c - Makes You Stupider	1 - Highly Readable 2 - Average Quality 3 - Potentially Painful

Every so often, the Cavalcade of Risk's hosts have to deal with the problem of people contributing posts that are either totally unrelated spam or that don't have much to do with the concept of risk. Normally, they ignore those kinds of posts, but still have to go to the time and trouble of reading and reviewing them only to find out that they wasted their time because the contributor chose to ignore the guidelines for contributing posts to each edition of the Cavalcade of Risk.

So, back when we first hosted the Cavalcade of Risk (Edition #66), we concocted the idea of adapting the rating system for bonds and other debt instruments to evaluate the quality of posts contributed to the Cavalcade! The table showing our Blog Post Rating System for Blog Carnivals describes how to interpret the ratings we've awarded above!

Apparently, the message got out this week, because we didn't have to downgrade any contributions to the dreaded Dc3 rating. But then, others weren't so lucky for the previous editions of the Cavalcade of Risk we've hosted: