Your numbers for the K-12 education are off by an order of magnitude. The total state budget for K-12 education is $39.2 billion. With a total enrollment in the state of 6.2 million students, then it's an average of $6,300 per student.
What's really destroying education in California is Proposition 13. That single proposition stripped away a significant amount of money earned from property taxes. The housing market has ballooned a lot over the past few decades, but now many properties have an assessed value way below their true market values.
Of course you're correct, but this is all the right-wing (and Tea Party) spin on the issues. The main article is written by a former official under Bush II who conveniently ignores the fact that the Republican party opposes EVERYTHING supported by any Democrats. The Democrats wanted to extend the payroll tax cut, while the Republicans opposed it until they finally gave in on a two month extension. They're also trying to kill any additional regulation of Wall Street, because these bills are usually being proposed by Democrats. And the "individual mandate" of the Obama health care plan? That was supported by Nixon, the Heritage Foundation, and even Romney way before Obama proposed it.
If the Democrats you support are Kucinich, Sanders, and Franken, then I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're pretty far to the left. And Paul is going to be one of the worst picks you can make.
He's a complete nutjob. He's opposed to practically every single government agency, including the Dept of Education, EPA, NIH, and the Social Security Administration. He's a racist who opposes the Civil Rights Act and has a pretty devoted following of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He's against consumer legislation. He wants to go back to the gold standard. He also compared Social Security and Medicare to slavery. WTF?
He's an obstetrician/gynecologist who opposes abortion. That doesn't even make sense. He claims to be a libertarian, yet wants to prevent women from getting abortions? He wouldn't care for a patient who couldn't afford his services (and he pretty much said this in an earlier debate on TV). His son is an ophthalmologist who decided to quit the national opthalmology licensing board to start his own.
Look, I don't like Obama at all. But Ron Paul (and his son) are crazy as shit and I sure as hell won't vote for him.
The police can legally follow you around in a car without a warrant. They argue that GPS tracking is the same thing. I don't agree with the argument, but it's not easy to argue that they're completely different situations.
I've always felt that the "Living Constitution" depends on the context of the current period. Even those who strongly support gun rights (e.g., Scalia) has said that it may not be unconstitutional to bar felons from possessing certains, for example. But the constitution has never said anything regarding that.
The fact that technology has changed so much over the past 200+ years shows that originalism makes little if any sense now. Like the GPS tracking and the Fourth Amendment -- I think it's an unreasonable search if done without a warrant, but trying to claim the original meaning or intent of the Amendment says something about it one way or the other seems ridiculous.
The goal is to decrease the deficit, not to instill some political opinion upon the country. Yes, I want to see a lot of government programs cut, including the military, but I want Medicare to be able to negotiate (or set) drug prices and lower coverages for certain procedures, and a few other changes. But when roughly half of the people sign some document saying they would never agree to any tax increase, then it's a little counterproductive, don't you think? Plus, only cutting spending can often lead to a decrease in GDP.
I don't even know where to begin. The economical problems in this world have come from capitalism run amok and the lack of regulation of the financial markets. Throw in some countries with very poor governments (e.g., Greece, Italy, and so on), and now we have severe problems everywhere. Who said anything about inflation? If anything, the wealth disparity has increased dramatically in the U.S. over the last few decades. Furthermore, what does China have to do with anything? It's a horrible mix of ridiculous capitalism mixed with state-sponsored oligopolies, controlled by those in power. Heck, I'm Chinese and I would never want to have anything to do with the country. Have you met a lot of people from China?
I don't know why everyone tries to be "fair" and blame the Republicans and Democrats equally for not "compromising." Any rational person knows that it makes no sense trying to close a budget deficit without raising taxes and undoing some of the damage of the Bush years (when he cut taxes for the wealthy, estate taxes, capital gains taxes, etc.) The Republicans were never going to agree to anything, but they get to play the blame game as usual.
I don't doubt that the FDA works for Big Pharma. But I would much rather have Margaret Hamburg running the FDA than a bunch of politicians influenced by industry lobbyists. Many legislators, especially Republicans, are pushing for "faster" (weakened) approval processes for drugs and medical devices. They point to the fact that drugs take ~15 years to develop and get approved. I'm a med student, and I'd gladly have the FDA make rules requiring pharmaceutical companies prove their drugs are safe and effective, their manufacturing practices follow GMP, and the ingredients are what they claim to be.
I'm not defending the FCC's net neutrality position. But I don't want to make sweeping generalizations, because sometimes unelected bureaucrats are better than politicians who have no idea what they're talking about. I don't like some of Obama's appointees, particularly those involved in financial matters, but it's hard to find politicians more qualified than Hamburg, Lisa P. Jackson, Steven Chu, and Elizabeth Warren (had she not been blocked).
Oh right, because private companies would do such a good job to ensure net neutrality. I mean, who's supposed to ensure that content gatekeepers don't create tiered services? ISPs? Uh huh...
Sometimes you just need to admit that government regulations are necessary. No FDA? You can go back to the days before Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and Frances Oldham Kelsey. How about the EPA? Not sure why people oppose the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. And if the US government were a company, you might have been bankrupt long ago.
No, all international profits are usually kept off-shore because repatriation of those profits would be taxed at usual rates. Trying to bring the money back to the US without paying taxes would be massive tax fraud (at least compared to the tax fraud that these companies normally do). Thus, companies actively advocate for "repatriation holidays," which are nothing more than corporate tax breaks.
I would actually agree with the sibling and GP posters. There's a smaller emphasis on organic chemistry and much more on verbal nowadays.
My understanding always was to put the most emphasis on verbal and the physical sciences, because most students are biology majors so it wouldn't be easy to do better than others in the biological sciences. Therefore, you want to put an effort in the other two subjects to maximize your score.
Then again, I'm not that far along in the entire process. Taking Step 1 in a month and a half...
You have a false dichotomy between "birtherism" and "trutherism." "Trutherism" isn't a real movement because they don't care about the truth; It's all about the fishing expedition you describe to get as much dirt on the other side. Really, they're all a waste of time until one side uses it to slander his opponent.
"Birtherism" is just a name for a bunch of idiots to rail against everything: "socialism," homosexuality, etc. There is a valid argument that McCain wasn't native-born (since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone to active-duty parents), but there was no one seriously doubting it. In fact, in the 2008 elections, people even discussed amending the law so that there would be no question McCain qualified to be president. That's not the same as the nutjobs who still think Obama was born in Kenya, Indonesia, or somewhere else. Nearly every single Republican candidate believes in "birtherism," and one uses it as his entire platform. There is a huge percentage of the population who still think that Obama wasn't born in the US, either due to racism or stupidity.
Let's face it, Republicans are idiots. In the 2000 primaries, there were rumors swirling that John McCain fathered a black baby (he adopted a Bangladeshi girl from an orphanage run by Mother Theresa). Others accused him of abandoning the veterans (while no one complained that Bush was never deployed to Vietnam.) You have to be stupid not to believe the Bush-Rove machine was behind these attacks. And you know what? People believed it. The same thing happened four years later, when a well-connected Texas group started to air ads that accused John Kerry (another Vietnam POW) of questioning whether he actually deserved his Purple Hearts and other awards. Bush and Trump, who are both from very rich families, avoided the draft. Clinton did the same, but had a Senator help him.
No, you're wrong. Greenwald has consistently been on the side of protecting the individual. That's what a constitutional lawyer should do, after all. It's Wired that has been misusing this argument to defend itself.
With Assange, releasing information about rape and molestation allegations against Assange, who has not been charged with a crime, is character assassination. If the US government publicly stated: "We want to interview Person A in regards to potential child pornography charges," then it is just destroying Person A's reputation.
The same applies to Manning. Wired has already leaked portions of chat transcripts that it alleges demonstrates Manning's guilt (and Lamo's supposed hacking skills). Paulsen has written stories implying Manning's guilt, and suggesting that he was trying to brag to Lamo about what he did. However, as Greenwald writes in his column, there are holes in the chat logs (such as timestamp discrepancies) and other questionable conclusions in Wired's stories that don't quite make sense. Wired's publications have already caused a man to be jailed for months without being charged with a crime. Greenwald and others want to see the unedited chat logs to clarify things up.
I find it disingenuous that Wired tries to misquote Greenwald. The "Journalists should be about releasing facts, not protecting anyone" quote was directly about Wired. He says that Wired should not hide behind the claim of protecting Manning. How can Wired publish allegations of potential treason against Manning (as the US government calls it) and then claim that it now want to protect him?
I have a similar story that took place in San Francisco. My friend signed up with AT&T at one of their authorized resellers, and finally got her phone after completing the forms, paying the money, etc. She asked if she could use the phone immediately (in the store), and the salesperson told her no. Apparently, the store didn't even have reception.
I laughed when I read that the first $28.4 million was spent on Lawson. My mom is in charge of payroll for a medium-sized company, and the employees are mostly doctors (who are probably the most difficult group to deal with, second only to lawyers). She complains daily about Lawson system that they have been rolling out.
The IT department of her company is utterly incompetent, and the business analysts and consultants that Lawson sends are just as bad. Lawson is custom-developing the ERP for her company, but no one bothered to work with the users to understand the requirements. Management is bad, but getting rid of poorly-trained consultants would also make the world better.
"Legislating from the bench" or "activist judging" are meaning political phrases that conservatives (and liberals, occasionally) throw around to accuse the other side of making decisions it doesn't like. Some of the most famous civil rights cases could be called "legislating from the bench" because they overturned or ignored precedent. The decision in Brown v. Board of Education overturned a previous Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, so this is activism. Roe v. Wade was a big decision and is often cited as well, but the recent ruling Gonzales v. Carhart (2007, upholding the "Partial-Birth" Abortion Act of 2003) ignored two previous rulings - Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and Roe v. Wade.
Judges are supposed to follow precedent and the law, but there is nothing that says it must follow "the original intents" of the law. That's a judicial philosophy to which some (such as Justice Scalia) claim to subscribe.
I think the "bionic eye" they refer to is more about the interface between an artificial eye and the human visual system, rather than an eye transplant. Like you said, the retina is composed of neural cells, so removing the eye or optic nerve leads to blindness that is most likely irreversible (like in retinal detachment). As far as I'm aware, "eye" transplants are transplants of the cornea.
Current artificial eyes pass signals to the retina or to the visual cortex, but they have very low resolutions. I've heard about the Dobelle eye from a few years ago that had up to 12x12 resolution; I expect that to be better now. It seems very low to me because I'm sighted, but it probably means a lot to someone who can't see. I know scientists have had success with the motor cortex, but vision just seems a more challenging task.
How is this situation different from Microsoft or Adobe selling their "student's" or "teacher's" versions of their crappy software? It's a private company realizing that if they don't sell at a lower price, they will have no customers (or worse for them, be undercut by generic manufacturers). Granted, the CEO is doing a whole lot more than what the CEOs of the other companies (Merck, Pfizer, etc.) are doing.
What does "Government" have to do with it? I would love to see countries invest more in efforts to irradiate or stop the transmission of polio, HIV, and other diseases. Cholera is ravaging through Zimbabwe, and at the same time, many of the people of Zimbabwe have been fleeing to South Africa. It's possible (though I'm not sure how likely) that cholera spreads even further.
Yes, R&D costs are very high. But a significant portion of the research is sponsored by governments, not necessarily by drug manufacturers. Plus, it's hard to be sympathetic when drug manufacturers spend more money on marketing than on R&D. They also have one of the largest profit margins.
It's a little unfair to be comparing the costs of drugs and of graphics cards. One is possibly a matter of life and death. And, in an economy in which every major industry is suffering, healthcare costs continue to rise.
That's interesting if not particularly novel: some of the people I worked for were doing this twenty-five years ago using EEGs.
The superior colliculus is fairly deep within the brain, so my guess is that they're using single-unit recording, which has been around for at least 30 years, to record from neurons. EEGs don't give readings at the neuronal level, anyway.
Just to add to that, these very same companies often have exclusive distribution rights for specialty drugs that often cost thousands of dollars a month. "Pharmacy benefit managers" reap huge profits from these drugs, even though it runs against the company's supposed goal of saving money.
If I remember correctly, anesthesiologists are never part of a PPO or HMO. They have no financial incentive to do so. Patients don't choose the anesthesiologist; it's usually assigned by the hospital (or more specifically, whoever does the scheduling in the operating room). I used to volunteer in an operating room, and we would change anesthesiologists for cases depending on their availability, or have them switch off in the middle of a long transplant.
Only for labs. For lectures, I had some woman teach 3A during summer school, and then Ellman for 3B. Ellman has the neatest writing for a professor I've ever seen. Great lecturer too.
I agree. Actually, I graduated from EECS (electrical engineering) at UC Berkeley last year and didn't do that well, but also took the premed courses for med school. I found ochem and bio to be really interesting, and those were some of my most enjoyable classes (and most helpful at boosting my GPA:P). In my opinion, ochem was really helpful for biochem, which is probably more useful for a doctor, but like you said, ochem requires more "longitudinal thinking."
Kinda going OT here, but I think doctors, in general, aren't as "smart" as people make them out to be. Sure, there are many insane geniuses, but there are many who are just average. They may have good hands and can be adept during surgeries, but it's the scientists and researchers who really study the functionality, development, and anything else that goes in depth. The doctors' knowledge barely scratches the surface. Thus, in a strange way, I think "weeder" classes are good.
Ok, I'm actually writing my secondaries right now, so I should stop talking...
Slashdot Mirror
Your numbers for the K-12 education are off by an order of magnitude. The total state budget for K-12 education is $39.2 billion. With a total enrollment in the state of 6.2 million students, then it's an average of $6,300 per student.
What's really destroying education in California is Proposition 13. That single proposition stripped away a significant amount of money earned from property taxes. The housing market has ballooned a lot over the past few decades, but now many properties have an assessed value way below their true market values.
Of course you're correct, but this is all the right-wing (and Tea Party) spin on the issues. The main article is written by a former official under Bush II who conveniently ignores the fact that the Republican party opposes EVERYTHING supported by any Democrats. The Democrats wanted to extend the payroll tax cut, while the Republicans opposed it until they finally gave in on a two month extension. They're also trying to kill any additional regulation of Wall Street, because these bills are usually being proposed by Democrats. And the "individual mandate" of the Obama health care plan? That was supported by Nixon, the Heritage Foundation, and even Romney way before Obama proposed it.
This is just typical rewriting of history.
If the Democrats you support are Kucinich, Sanders, and Franken, then I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're pretty far to the left. And Paul is going to be one of the worst picks you can make.
He's a complete nutjob. He's opposed to practically every single government agency, including the Dept of Education, EPA, NIH, and the Social Security Administration. He's a racist who opposes the Civil Rights Act and has a pretty devoted following of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He's against consumer legislation. He wants to go back to the gold standard. He also compared Social Security and Medicare to slavery. WTF?
He's an obstetrician/gynecologist who opposes abortion. That doesn't even make sense. He claims to be a libertarian, yet wants to prevent women from getting abortions? He wouldn't care for a patient who couldn't afford his services (and he pretty much said this in an earlier debate on TV). His son is an ophthalmologist who decided to quit the national opthalmology licensing board to start his own.
Look, I don't like Obama at all. But Ron Paul (and his son) are crazy as shit and I sure as hell won't vote for him.
The police can legally follow you around in a car without a warrant. They argue that GPS tracking is the same thing. I don't agree with the argument, but it's not easy to argue that they're completely different situations.
I've always felt that the "Living Constitution" depends on the context of the current period. Even those who strongly support gun rights (e.g., Scalia) has said that it may not be unconstitutional to bar felons from possessing certains, for example. But the constitution has never said anything regarding that.
The fact that technology has changed so much over the past 200+ years shows that originalism makes little if any sense now. Like the GPS tracking and the Fourth Amendment -- I think it's an unreasonable search if done without a warrant, but trying to claim the original meaning or intent of the Amendment says something about it one way or the other seems ridiculous.
The goal is to decrease the deficit, not to instill some political opinion upon the country. Yes, I want to see a lot of government programs cut, including the military, but I want Medicare to be able to negotiate (or set) drug prices and lower coverages for certain procedures, and a few other changes. But when roughly half of the people sign some document saying they would never agree to any tax increase, then it's a little counterproductive, don't you think? Plus, only cutting spending can often lead to a decrease in GDP.
I don't even know where to begin. The economical problems in this world have come from capitalism run amok and the lack of regulation of the financial markets. Throw in some countries with very poor governments (e.g., Greece, Italy, and so on), and now we have severe problems everywhere. Who said anything about inflation? If anything, the wealth disparity has increased dramatically in the U.S. over the last few decades. Furthermore, what does China have to do with anything? It's a horrible mix of ridiculous capitalism mixed with state-sponsored oligopolies, controlled by those in power. Heck, I'm Chinese and I would never want to have anything to do with the country. Have you met a lot of people from China?
I don't know why everyone tries to be "fair" and blame the Republicans and Democrats equally for not "compromising." Any rational person knows that it makes no sense trying to close a budget deficit without raising taxes and undoing some of the damage of the Bush years (when he cut taxes for the wealthy, estate taxes, capital gains taxes, etc.) The Republicans were never going to agree to anything, but they get to play the blame game as usual.
I don't doubt that the FDA works for Big Pharma. But I would much rather have Margaret Hamburg running the FDA than a bunch of politicians influenced by industry lobbyists. Many legislators, especially Republicans, are pushing for "faster" (weakened) approval processes for drugs and medical devices. They point to the fact that drugs take ~15 years to develop and get approved. I'm a med student, and I'd gladly have the FDA make rules requiring pharmaceutical companies prove their drugs are safe and effective, their manufacturing practices follow GMP, and the ingredients are what they claim to be.
I'm not defending the FCC's net neutrality position. But I don't want to make sweeping generalizations, because sometimes unelected bureaucrats are better than politicians who have no idea what they're talking about. I don't like some of Obama's appointees, particularly those involved in financial matters, but it's hard to find politicians more qualified than Hamburg, Lisa P. Jackson, Steven Chu, and Elizabeth Warren (had she not been blocked).
Oh right, because private companies would do such a good job to ensure net neutrality. I mean, who's supposed to ensure that content gatekeepers don't create tiered services? ISPs? Uh huh...
Sometimes you just need to admit that government regulations are necessary. No FDA? You can go back to the days before Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and Frances Oldham Kelsey. How about the EPA? Not sure why people oppose the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. And if the US government were a company, you might have been bankrupt long ago.
No, all international profits are usually kept off-shore because repatriation of those profits would be taxed at usual rates. Trying to bring the money back to the US without paying taxes would be massive tax fraud (at least compared to the tax fraud that these companies normally do). Thus, companies actively advocate for "repatriation holidays," which are nothing more than corporate tax breaks.
I would actually agree with the sibling and GP posters. There's a smaller emphasis on organic chemistry and much more on verbal nowadays.
My understanding always was to put the most emphasis on verbal and the physical sciences, because most students are biology majors so it wouldn't be easy to do better than others in the biological sciences. Therefore, you want to put an effort in the other two subjects to maximize your score.
Then again, I'm not that far along in the entire process. Taking Step 1 in a month and a half...
You have a false dichotomy between "birtherism" and "trutherism." "Trutherism" isn't a real movement because they don't care about the truth; It's all about the fishing expedition you describe to get as much dirt on the other side. Really, they're all a waste of time until one side uses it to slander his opponent.
"Birtherism" is just a name for a bunch of idiots to rail against everything: "socialism," homosexuality, etc. There is a valid argument that McCain wasn't native-born (since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone to active-duty parents), but there was no one seriously doubting it. In fact, in the 2008 elections, people even discussed amending the law so that there would be no question McCain qualified to be president. That's not the same as the nutjobs who still think Obama was born in Kenya, Indonesia, or somewhere else. Nearly every single Republican candidate believes in "birtherism," and one uses it as his entire platform. There is a huge percentage of the population who still think that Obama wasn't born in the US, either due to racism or stupidity.
Let's face it, Republicans are idiots. In the 2000 primaries, there were rumors swirling that John McCain fathered a black baby (he adopted a Bangladeshi girl from an orphanage run by Mother Theresa). Others accused him of abandoning the veterans (while no one complained that Bush was never deployed to Vietnam.) You have to be stupid not to believe the Bush-Rove machine was behind these attacks. And you know what? People believed it. The same thing happened four years later, when a well-connected Texas group started to air ads that accused John Kerry (another Vietnam POW) of questioning whether he actually deserved his Purple Hearts and other awards. Bush and Trump, who are both from very rich families, avoided the draft. Clinton did the same, but had a Senator help him.
No, you're wrong. Greenwald has consistently been on the side of protecting the individual. That's what a constitutional lawyer should do, after all. It's Wired that has been misusing this argument to defend itself.
With Assange, releasing information about rape and molestation allegations against Assange, who has not been charged with a crime, is character assassination. If the US government publicly stated: "We want to interview Person A in regards to potential child pornography charges," then it is just destroying Person A's reputation.
The same applies to Manning. Wired has already leaked portions of chat transcripts that it alleges demonstrates Manning's guilt (and Lamo's supposed hacking skills). Paulsen has written stories implying Manning's guilt, and suggesting that he was trying to brag to Lamo about what he did. However, as Greenwald writes in his column, there are holes in the chat logs (such as timestamp discrepancies) and other questionable conclusions in Wired's stories that don't quite make sense. Wired's publications have already caused a man to be jailed for months without being charged with a crime. Greenwald and others want to see the unedited chat logs to clarify things up.
I find it disingenuous that Wired tries to misquote Greenwald. The "Journalists should be about releasing facts, not protecting anyone" quote was directly about Wired. He says that Wired should not hide behind the claim of protecting Manning. How can Wired publish allegations of potential treason against Manning (as the US government calls it) and then claim that it now want to protect him?
I have a similar story that took place in San Francisco. My friend signed up with AT&T at one of their authorized resellers, and finally got her phone after completing the forms, paying the money, etc. She asked if she could use the phone immediately (in the store), and the salesperson told her no. Apparently, the store didn't even have reception.
I laughed when I read that the first $28.4 million was spent on Lawson. My mom is in charge of payroll for a medium-sized company, and the employees are mostly doctors (who are probably the most difficult group to deal with, second only to lawyers). She complains daily about Lawson system that they have been rolling out.
The IT department of her company is utterly incompetent, and the business analysts and consultants that Lawson sends are just as bad. Lawson is custom-developing the ERP for her company, but no one bothered to work with the users to understand the requirements. Management is bad, but getting rid of poorly-trained consultants would also make the world better.
"Legislating from the bench" or "activist judging" are meaning political phrases that conservatives (and liberals, occasionally) throw around to accuse the other side of making decisions it doesn't like. Some of the most famous civil rights cases could be called "legislating from the bench" because they overturned or ignored precedent. The decision in Brown v. Board of Education overturned a previous Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, so this is activism. Roe v. Wade was a big decision and is often cited as well, but the recent ruling Gonzales v. Carhart (2007, upholding the "Partial-Birth" Abortion Act of 2003) ignored two previous rulings - Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and Roe v. Wade.
Judges are supposed to follow precedent and the law, but there is nothing that says it must follow "the original intents" of the law. That's a judicial philosophy to which some (such as Justice Scalia) claim to subscribe.
IANAL.
I think the "bionic eye" they refer to is more about the interface between an artificial eye and the human visual system, rather than an eye transplant. Like you said, the retina is composed of neural cells, so removing the eye or optic nerve leads to blindness that is most likely irreversible (like in retinal detachment). As far as I'm aware, "eye" transplants are transplants of the cornea.
Current artificial eyes pass signals to the retina or to the visual cortex, but they have very low resolutions. I've heard about the Dobelle eye from a few years ago that had up to 12x12 resolution; I expect that to be better now. It seems very low to me because I'm sighted, but it probably means a lot to someone who can't see. I know scientists have had success with the motor cortex, but vision just seems a more challenging task.
More research funding is a good thing though.
How is this situation different from Microsoft or Adobe selling their "student's" or "teacher's" versions of their crappy software? It's a private company realizing that if they don't sell at a lower price, they will have no customers (or worse for them, be undercut by generic manufacturers). Granted, the CEO is doing a whole lot more than what the CEOs of the other companies (Merck, Pfizer, etc.) are doing.
What does "Government" have to do with it? I would love to see countries invest more in efforts to irradiate or stop the transmission of polio, HIV, and other diseases. Cholera is ravaging through Zimbabwe, and at the same time, many of the people of Zimbabwe have been fleeing to South Africa. It's possible (though I'm not sure how likely) that cholera spreads even further.
Yes, R&D costs are very high. But a significant portion of the research is sponsored by governments, not necessarily by drug manufacturers. Plus, it's hard to be sympathetic when drug manufacturers spend more money on marketing than on R&D. They also have one of the largest profit margins.
It's a little unfair to be comparing the costs of drugs and of graphics cards. One is possibly a matter of life and death. And, in an economy in which every major industry is suffering, healthcare costs continue to rise.
That's interesting if not particularly novel: some of the people I worked for were doing this twenty-five years ago using EEGs.
The superior colliculus is fairly deep within the brain, so my guess is that they're using single-unit recording, which has been around for at least 30 years, to record from neurons. EEGs don't give readings at the neuronal level, anyway.
Just to add to that, these very same companies often have exclusive distribution rights for specialty drugs that often cost thousands of dollars a month. "Pharmacy benefit managers" reap huge profits from these drugs, even though it runs against the company's supposed goal of saving money.
If I remember correctly, anesthesiologists are never part of a PPO or HMO. They have no financial incentive to do so. Patients don't choose the anesthesiologist; it's usually assigned by the hospital (or more specifically, whoever does the scheduling in the operating room). I used to volunteer in an operating room, and we would change anesthesiologists for cases depending on their availability, or have them switch off in the middle of a long transplant.
Only for labs. For lectures, I had some woman teach 3A during summer school, and then Ellman for 3B. Ellman has the neatest writing for a professor I've ever seen. Great lecturer too.
I agree. Actually, I graduated from EECS (electrical engineering) at UC Berkeley last year and didn't do that well, but also took the premed courses for med school. I found ochem and bio to be really interesting, and those were some of my most enjoyable classes (and most helpful at boosting my GPA :P). In my opinion, ochem was really helpful for biochem, which is probably more useful for a doctor, but like you said, ochem requires more "longitudinal thinking."
Kinda going OT here, but I think doctors, in general, aren't as "smart" as people make them out to be. Sure, there are many insane geniuses, but there are many who are just average. They may have good hands and can be adept during surgeries, but it's the scientists and researchers who really study the functionality, development, and anything else that goes in depth. The doctors' knowledge barely scratches the surface. Thus, in a strange way, I think "weeder" classes are good.
Ok, I'm actually writing my secondaries right now, so I should stop talking...