Kansas has the tools, the staff and desire to win the championships, and Wefald and others say other big time recruits, comparable to the NBAF project, will be forthcoming. He called it "the biggest thing to happen in Kansas since the Civil War."
I'm pretty sure that he meant to say "since Brown v. Topeka Board of Education." Yeah...he definitely meant to say that.
I'd like to know a little more about what this lab will really do. It's almost certainly going to be very controversial with animal rights groups (PETA will probably put in a satellite office in Manhattan) given that much of the work will (apparently) involve experiments on livestock. I'd like to know whether the animal-based experiments will be heinous or extremely controversial (if they ever see the light of day, that is). Rumor has it that the lab was formerly involved with offensive bio-terrorism in the days of the cold war. My understanding is that most of the problems associated with the Plum Island facility were due to poor management and aging facilities. I'd like to believe that the Manhattan site (if it comes to fruition) could maintain great management through close oversight (both internally and through the dept of homeland security). I don't know what to believe, so I'd really like to see a relatively unbiased account of this lab and its expected impacts and/or risks. I'm highly skeptical of a number of things that our government does in the name of anti-terrorism, but anti-bioterrorism is one thing that I think is really worth a significant investment.
It's pretty encouraging to me to see that major metropolitan areas were included in the original list of potential sites - Lawrence Livermore in the bay area, Madison, WI, and Boston come to mind. That, at least, leads me to believe that the risks associated with the facility are most likely less scary than some of the alarmists (I hope it's fair to call the people jumping to conclusions about the facility's past transgressions alarmists) make them out to be. It doesn't seem like they're just saying, "Oh, hell! Why'd we put this thing near New York City?!" Inadequate facilities seem to be the main problem.