Even if you're going to get 'routine' major surgery with general anaesthetic you should insist on a spinal block for pain. The anaesthetic blocks out frontal lobe consciousness and some memory formation, but other parts of the brain are going, "holy fuck, I'm being sawn in half!" which leads to major brain trauma and long-lasting problems.

California’s democracy is not at all like America’s, as conceived by founders such as James Madison. The federal constitution is based on checks and balances within and among three and only three branches of government—executive, legislative and judicial. That is because Madison feared that popular “passions” would undo the republic, that majorities might “tyrannise” minorities, and that “minority factions” (ie, special interests) would take over the system. America’s was therefore to be a representative, not a direct, democracy. “Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention,” Madison wrote, “and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

High density has severe negative costs

BT claimed for every customer that deserted Virgin in the last quarter, 20 joined BT.

[The app] is only available on Android phones because of the timelag and difficulty in getting apps into app stores for the iPhone and BlackBerry

When the map exists, could the information be fed into an app on the phone which would help users find coverage, eWEEK Europe asked Wood [the app developer's marketing manager]. “We hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “We work on the measurement side.”