“or shutting down the manned space program…In the end, it’s just another government welfare program.”
Where did your computer come from? Government research.
Where did your internet come from? Government research.
Where did that GPS you use in your car, or boat, or phone come from? Government research.
What paid for the cures for cancer? Government research.
What paid for the cures for heart disease? Government research.
I could, literally, go on all night. But I hope that you get the picture.
"What paid for the cures for cancer? Government research."
A recent ad soliciting contributions on TV claims the American Cancer Society is behind all the breakthroughs in cancer cures. But if you get cancer and you need any one of the drugs that may cure you, the drug company will tell you that it was their money that went into the research that developed the drug and that is why you and/or your insurance company has to pay those outrageous costs.
Add up the NIH funding (National Cancer Institute) to see that $3 billion was spent for cancer research in 2011 alone. The American Cancer Society grants total $0.5 billion for all projects. Projects are never for only one year. This means that ACS funcing, while quite large, is far less than one tenth of the amount spent by the US Government on your behalf to fight cancer. If you like, I’ll look up the heard disease levels, too.
Yes indeed, a lot of money gets spent on cancer research, or on payrolls and facilities where this research is performed…The “War on Cancer” has been going on a long time, a fantastic amount of money has been spent, but true “breakthroughs” are a very rare event…More people than ever before are being stricken with cancer, just as many people as ever are dying from it, I don’t think we are getting our monies worth when you consider money spent and results achieved…The “researcher” profession has turned into a very comfortable career path…
If you want a very accurate clock, buy one…Don’t ask the taxpayers to provide you with a “Free” timekeeping radio broadcast…There are simply not enough celestial navigators left to justify the expense of keeping WWV on the air…And for navigation, a quality, calibrated quartz timepiece is accurate enough…
jt, I think you missed my point. My point was with all this money that goes into research, how is it that the drug companies can claim that they and they alone are responsible for all the breakthroughs and that is why they are justified in charging upwards of a half million a year to keep one cancer patient alive.
The drug companies all spend more on MARKETING than they do on RESEARCH…
The most popular prescription drug is Viagra…$10 a pill. Costs almost nothing to make. Discovered by accident… You can’t turn on your television without seeing ads for it…Not only will the patent run out soon, but they are going to release it over-the-counter…Be as common (and as cheap as) aspirin…
"The drug companies all spend more on MARKETING than they do on RESEARCH.."
Caddyman, I know that. I’m trying to make a point here. Has no one noticed that a recent cancer drug, Gleevac, was discovered in a university research center (NCU I think) using public funds from both government and private donations like the ACS, but the makers of Gleevac claim that they spent $40 mil developing the drug and so justify its outrageous price.
The point I am trying to make is that we the tax payer and contributors and 5k runners etc should be getting some benefit from our contributions. The drug companies do deserve to make a profit for providing a service, but a half mill a year to treat each patient?
and while I’m on a rant and you brought up Viagra, did you hear about the convicted rapist that sued Medicade for not providing him with boner pills?
“jt, I think you missed my point. My point was with all this money that goes into research, how is it that the drug companies can claim that they and they alone are responsible for all the breakthroughs and that is why they are justified in charging upwards of a half million a year to keep one cancer patient alive.”
@kieth, you are right. I didn’t see that at all. But here’s how it works: NIH gives money for promising research projects. Drug companies likely receive some of it. This cuts, but does not eliminate, drug development costs. There are costs associated with getting FDA approval, and I think the drug companies are responsible for those. In any case, the commercial partner is allowed to patent the product as part of their fee for development. If this relationship did not exist, the drug companies would have much less incentive to develop drugs. Especially those that are used by only a small fraction of the population and for a limited time. Drug companies are quite happy to develop drugs like statins to reduce cholesterol. Once started, they are a life long companion.
edit: written before I read @kieth’s response to @caddyman.
You make a good point, but the patent owner likely did spend upwards of $40M of their own money to develop the drug after they took over from the university researchers. They may also have been collaborators.
@bscar2: 867 is a local prefix in a suburb near me. When that song came out, I was in high school, and along with everyone else, I called the number to see if Jenny would answer. I don’t know if there was ever anyone named Jenny at that number, but I really pity the poor people that had that number.
There is a stretch of road in New York that’s so populated with radio towers that car manufacturers actually use it to test prototype vehicle systems for resistance to EMI. Or at least they used to. This was even reported in Car and Driver.
My own personal experience with this sort of thing is when I was an under employed 20 year old and had an early 80s car with a primitive computer-controlled ignition. There was a Christian radio station that had a 50KW transmitter tower less than 50 yards from the road in a semi-rural area. I had to drive by it every day. No matter what radio station you were listening to, you would get snatches of their broadcasting when you drove by that tower, and my normally smooth running car would sometimes ‘hiccup’ if I was driving at a slow speed by there. It took a while to put 2 and 2 together, but I came to believe that this was caused by the massive amount of EMI being put out by that tower.
I pity the people that lived in the shadow of that tower. Besides the possible health risks of so much EM radiation 24/7, I can’t imagine that their radio and TV viewing were unaffected, despite the station having to meet FCC regulations.
Never heard of the song, but one would think they would at least try to find an unused prefix.
Would be great to have that telephone number for an advertisement recording!
Where is that station?
Since the antenna radiator is at the top of the tower, it is even farther away.
Would not the metal fenders and hood be enough of a Faraday cage to shield the primitive vehicle computer from EMI?
Since the radiated power drops so quickly with distance, I doubt (and hope) that there would be no health risks.
(My concern is cell phone next to head and our sleeping under a heating blanket all night.)
Most often I use an earbud to keep the cell phone away from my head.)
More people than ever before are being stricken with cancer, just as many people as ever are dying from it,
That’s because people are living longer. The longer you live the higher the likely-hood of getting cancer. We’ve CURED a few cancers. And the cancers we haven’t cured we’ve extended the life drastically of those who get cancer. 30 years ago…lung cancer was 90% fatal…now the odds are less then 20%. New treatment is coming all the time I agree breakthroughs are few and far between…but they are there. ALL technical research is that way.
I don’t remember that song either, but I do remember a song with Beechwood4-5789 that was very popular back in the 60’s.
Oblivion, all radio stations are EMI, they wouldn’t work without it. If this was an AM station, then I think you probably would have heard their signal even with your radio off. The coils in your speakers pick up the signal, and because they can’t respond to the carrier frequency, they do respond to the modulating frequency.
I had a similar issue once with a neighbor who hooked up a CB radio to a 1000 watt linear and a quad antenna on a tower. I was on a hill above him, but just below his antenna and when he pointed the beam across my house, it would activate the speakers in my stereo system, even when it was off.
I explained just how much damage a pin inserted through the coax could do and I never heard his CB chatter again.
Exact time truely was critical. I’m certain that the Navy and other branches had the same need for exact time. I’m sure civilian mariners and NASA needed exact time too. It really was that important.
Today I’m not so sure it’s as important as it once was.
Of course it’s still important. Exact time, which is really “agreed upon” time, is essential to navigation on or around the surface of a celestial body
It’s even more crucial than just circumnavigation. The term “exact time” could be broken down into two more detailed terms; precise and accurate. In really general terms, precise means the timebase is consistent whereas accurate refers to it being in-step with some master. Both of these features have never been more important than they are today. Our military relies on these two elements of time keeping to coordinate all of our battlefield assets and to determine who is friendly through secure communications. The common element is the tactical clock that each asset uses to coordinate communications timing and position information. The capabilities afforded by these tactical atomic clocks makes the WWV pulse look like a sundial by comparison…
-It was a religious-themed FM station, typically with a preacher belting out fire n’ brimstone sermons.
-Obviously all radio transmissions (and for that matter every candle flame and everything else that has ever emitted a photon, including the microwave background radiation leftover from the birth of the universe, and someone petting a staticky cat) could be classified as emitting EMI. However, when you have a 50KW source radiating energy a stone’s-throw away, it does tend to interfere with even the next strongest local station. For all I know, they may not have had the correct suppression in place or may have even been exceeding their legal power output. I have no idea how often a station like this in a town that could have been used as the setting for “Children of the Corn” is inspected or maintained.
I grew up near the turnpike, and there were big rigs going by all day long with illegal amps. We had a record player that would often pick up bits of CB conversations. Sometimes they would even interfere with not just the sound, but the picture on the TV. And we had cable. Like I said, I can only imagine the hell that people that lived across the street and otherwise very near that station went through just trying to listen to what radio and TV stations they wanted. When you’re radiating that much power, there are harmonics generated and eddy currents induced in all sorts of things nearby.
@MikeinNH: I’d personally be more worried about the electric blanket than the feeble signals being emitted by a modern cell phone at less than the strength of a kid’s toy walkie-talkie. While a cell phone at full broadcast power emits a tiny fraction of a watt, an electric blanket is running at perhaps 100W, and at a frequency much more likely to penetrate deep into your body, in very close proximity for extended periods of time. Then again, people have been using these for probably about 70 years and there don’t seem to be a rash of electric blanket-related cancers springing up.
I did see an interesting documentary on nuclear testing, specifically on the effects of the EMPs generated by nuclear explosions on electronics gear, and what the military did to harden equipment against them. The scary thing was that nearly every one of the scientists that were exposed to frequent high-energy electromagnetic pulses as part of the experiments went on to develop some form of leukemia.
oblivion, FM you say. 50kW is not a lot for an FM station. The religious stations were often run by a bunch of amateurs. Many believed that they could increase their range by increasing the strength of the modulating signal. Many CBers of the time thought the same thing. What they didn’t understand is that they would just create more harmonics that would bleed into adjacent channels. They actually lost range in their assigned channel.