My guess is BoB and NDT are trolling us. Funny stuff.

This.

For example, Michael J Fox had an ablative procedure (thalamotomy) to treat his parkinson's disease. We don't really do that procedure anymore because deep brain stimulation has gotten better, but this article is extremely light on details and the write up (particularly by the OP) is needlessly sensationalized.

This was not an act of "terrorism". The shooter was caucasian and does not have a foreign sounding name, so, by definition, this cannot be called terrorism. Apparently.

Not quite true.

The disorder in ALS is of the corticospinal tract, not the NMJ, but both points are irrelevant in this case. The researchers are decoding cortical signals and translating them drive a mechanical prosthesis. Theoretically, anyone with an intact motor cortex (spinal cord injured patient, as you point out, but also for ALS) should be able to manipulate one of these things.

Pretty cool stuff, but we're years away from anything clinically useful coming out of this because compared to other medical conditions, the research dollars just aren't there (the number of people with diabetes dwarfs all the SCI and amputees easily). Also, we need to figure out a way to use these non-invasively (i.e. outside the head) to avoid the problems with infection and the ethics of justifying an experimental brain surgery on a human...

first of all, a complete resection of a infiltrative glioma is not possible, because frequently by the time they're diagnosed, they've already crossed the corpus callosum into the contralateral hemisphere (google butterfly glioma. and those are just the cells we can see with MRI. we already know there are micrometastases that are not visible by /any/ currently available clinical imaging modality)

theoretically, you could do a gross total resection (we do these all the time) and irradiate the surrounding parenchyma with white light to reduce the tumor burden due to micrometastases. of course, we could just find a slightly different form of EM radiation (like x-rays) that penetrate better than visible light and activate the nanoparticles that way.

interesting stuff.

As a neurosurgeon, I have been involved in procedures like this (although not with a banjo player). To evaluate the efficacy of the tremor suppression, we frequently ask the patient to sip a glass of water.

The analogy of a surgeon as a glorified human body mechanic has been used on me in the past, too. I will accept the comparison with the following conditions:

Next time you take your car in, tell your mechanic that
1. You only plan on having one car for the rest of your life and
2. When they work on your car, they have to leave the engine running.

However, the Chinese government does not have the right to torture, murder, or repress the freedom of its citizens. It is wrong and the practice should stop.

From the US Declaration of Independence: That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The Government in China has whatever rights are given to it by its people, no more, no less. So the government in China does indeed have the right to opress the Chinese, because there is no logical seperation of the Government of China and the Chinese citizen. Without a recognized or enforced equivalent of the US Second Amendment in China, obviously the Chinese defending themselves from a corrupt government is harder, but certainly not impossible. A full popular revolt would be unstoppable.

Most Chinese I know, even those highly critical of the government, defend censorship in the name of social harmony. That is not the same view taken by the common US citizen for instance, but it is the Chinese view. We all view our freedoms and obligations of the government differently.

To give a third example on this point, India, a functioning democracy, employs great restrictions on freedom of speech and those are fully or nearly fully supported by the people of India. It is specifically illegal to make statements to cause social disharmony, and they have all kinds of restrictions on the use of the Indian Flag which would never fly in the US. Basically, they've outlawed being offended. In the US, the Supreme Court in a landmark flag burning case ruled specifically society cannot outlaw an act simply because the act itself is offensive to society. There was actually an article in an Indian newspaper around a month ago comparing the restrictions on the Indian flag with the US defense of Freedom of Expression (the context was someone was arrested for a Flag offense that in the US wouldn't even warrant notice - something like accidentally putting a drink on a Flag or something - my memory fails me a bit)

Different values. You can't judge China based on US values. What the government does is clearly acceptable to the people, who have the right to make that determination over their own lives. At such time the people do not support the government, the government will soon cease to exist.

It is helpful to know whom you are targeting in your job hunt.

As programmers, we laugh our guts out when we see job listings for a C programmer or Perl programmer, etc. because we know that anyone worth his or her salt should be able to pick up a new language quickly. After all, these languages are Turing complete. You can only express a for loop or an if statement in so many ways.

Those of us in the know realize that you want to hire for domain knowledge. I mean, I've been programming in C for 10 years, but if someone asked me to write medical imaging software in C, my language background is useless because I don't understand the problem.

When you hire a permanent employee, it obviously makes sense to hire for attitude and aptitude, since tech skills become obsolete so quickly. However, in defense of these job postings that have hyper-specific, buzz word laden requirements, I should point out that many are from recruting firms (head hunters). Their clients call them and say, "We need an experienced programmer that already knows C++ and can start work THIS WEEK because the project is already late/fubared/etc." Their clients often don't have time for you to inhale the O'Reilly book. They are desperate for someone to fix their problem immediately.