Fair comments, but I think it's more of a done deal than you suggest.
It's been in the offing for ages, and it's a nice fit particularly with the Sprint PCS wireless business. Bell South isn't a serious competitor given the regulatory hurdles, which aren't too bad for Sprint & MCI at all given their overlap. The European telecoms companies are all screwed up after the Telecom Italia fiasco and not seriously in the running.
I admire the sentiments, but you're a bit misinformed about the funding priorities of the US goverment.
In 1999 the National Institutes of Health received a *15* percent budget increase by $2 billion to $15.6 billion. The requested increase for 2000 is 'only' 2.1 percent but the chair of the House subcommittee that funds NIH was quoted as saying he intended to keep NIH on course to double its budget over five years (Nature 03-04-1999, sorry no URL with free access.)
R&D expenditure in the US on biomedical science is already twice that (per capita) in Europe and rising still faster. At least the NIH have their priorities right - maybe Europeans should follow suit?
I've never really understood this argument that availability leads to fewer people being killed. The logical extension of this argument in the light of Columbine would seem to be (as Charlton Heston I think pointed out) that arming teachers and schoolchildren would be a good idea. Surely even the most hardened NRA people must believe this is a obscence idea?
Anyway to rebut your specific argument that firearms are 'useful for self-defense' you should read the summary of this study in the NEJM (one of the world's leading medical journals). Keeping a firearm "in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio, 2.7; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 4.4). Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.".
Call me naive, but IMHO a device that makes you 2.7 times more likely to be killed by a friend or family member isn't something I would like to consider as 'useful for self defense'.
Don't be so despairing that you'll ever see the results of this documentary
The BBC has a big web presence and rebroadcasts a lot of its regular programmes in RealVideo. As a homesick expat I watch the news and current affairs all the time from this page
No reason why the documentary shouldn't air online also, particularly with a bit of peer group pressure, no?
Things aren't quite as bad as you imply with fMRI Nick; there's been a lot of work about this in the last ten years!
Optical imaging experiments show how you can use direct observation of the brain to interrelate the changes seen with fMRI and neural activity. There are many more similar studies, all of which suggest a close correlation between neural activity and fMRI measurements. More recently people have begun comparing similar paradigms directly in macaque and human using fMRI and electrophysiology
Slashdot Mirror
Fair comments, but I think it's more of a done deal than you suggest.
It's been in the offing for ages, and it's a nice fit particularly with the Sprint PCS wireless business. Bell South isn't a serious competitor given the regulatory hurdles, which aren't too bad for Sprint & MCI at all given their overlap. The European telecoms companies are all screwed up after the Telecom Italia fiasco and not seriously in the running.
There's a good long story at the NYT that covers many of these issues and also an editorialat the Economist.
I admire the sentiments, but you're a bit misinformed about the funding priorities of the US goverment.
In 1999 the National Institutes of Health received a *15* percent budget increase by $2 billion to $15.6 billion. The requested increase for 2000 is 'only' 2.1 percent but the chair of the House subcommittee that funds NIH was quoted as saying he intended to keep NIH on course to double its budget over five years (Nature 03-04-1999, sorry no URL with free access.)
R&D expenditure in the US on biomedical science is already twice that (per capita) in Europe and rising still faster. At least the NIH have their priorities right - maybe Europeans should follow suit?
I've never really understood this argument that availability leads to fewer people being killed. The logical extension of this argument in the light of Columbine would seem to be (as Charlton Heston I think pointed out) that arming teachers and schoolchildren would be a good idea. Surely even the most hardened NRA people must believe this is a obscence idea?
Anyway to rebut your specific argument that firearms are 'useful for self-defense' you should read the summary of this study in the NEJM (one of the world's leading medical journals). Keeping a firearm "in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio, 2.7; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 4.4). Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.".
Call me naive, but IMHO a device that makes you 2.7 times more likely to be killed by a friend or family member isn't something I would like to consider as 'useful for self defense'.
Hey!
Don't be so despairing that you'll ever see the results of this documentary
The BBC has a big web presence and rebroadcasts a lot of its regular programmes in RealVideo. As a homesick expat I watch the news and current affairs all the time from this page
No reason why the documentary shouldn't air online also, particularly with a bit of peer group pressure, no?
Things aren't quite as bad as you imply with fMRI Nick; there's been a lot of work about this in the last ten years!
Optical imaging experiments show how you can use direct observation of the brain to interrelate the changes seen with fMRI and neural activity. There are many more similar studies, all of which suggest a close correlation between neural activity and fMRI measurements. More recently people have begun comparing similar paradigms directly in macaque and human using fMRI and electrophysiology
Geraint
geraint@klab.caltech.edu