I helped kill 6 people

Before you call the cops - I also helped bring all 6 back to life.

Well, a couple months ago devices with circuits I helped design were implanted into the bodies of 6 people in New Zealand! Part of the implant procedure is putting the patient into ventricular fibrillation, which is reasonably close to death (the heart has stopped pumping blood through the body). Then the doctor checks to make sure the device brings the patient back (obviously with paddles near by in case the device doesn't do its job).

I think that between the two years of waiting for this to happen and not being at the company when it did made the whole thing somewhat anticlimactic for me. Although every once in a while it strikes me that there are six people out there with circuits I helped design in their bodies. And then I think, oh god I hope I didn't screw up! And I feel like I shouldn't claim too much credit in case something bad happens. Actually that is part of my lack of excitement - a lot of what I worked on and pushed for was making sure it would work reliably, which won't be known until lots of people have them for at least five years.

But my primary concern has disappointingly quickly shifted from people's safety to the value of my (trivially small number of) stock options. Well, at least the two are sufficiently linked that I don't have to feel too bad about it. At least I've avoided wishing someone would go into cardiac arrest so the device could save them.

For anyone wondering why New Zealand - my understanding is their version of FDA trials is basically to ask the company to pinky swear that their device won't hurt anyone (seriously I think the company just signs some ethics statement - sometimes the US FDA doesn't seem so bad).

6 Seconds

At work I sometimes use a screen capture program to show results (it takes whatever is on the screen and saves it to an image file). I typically set it to do the capture 8 seconds after I push the go button. It takes me at least one second to then get everything set up how I want it. Then, very often, with at least one second to spare I think to myself - I'm bored. So I've now bounded my time to boredom as less than 6 seconds. I find this disturbing. I could get bored more than 2.5 times during a single scene of Robot Chicken. <Insert lame joke about ending this post due to boredom.>

Life on other planets will be a let down

I realized today that if we ever discover life on other planets, initially it will be a serious let down. There's not going to be a moment of serious excitement, but rather a very long series of small steps.

The most likely way to find life on another planet is to find something like bacteria. Which to some scientists will be really exciting, but overall - whoo hoo - bacteria. Plus it will be really hard to prove that it didn't just get put there by coming in contact with the person or robot that found it. Heck there was that thing with the asteroid or whatever a long time ago and it was sorta big news for a while and now I can't even remember the story.

But let's say we actually discover intelligent life, which I think is what most people mean when they talk about discovering life. I think we've explored our solar system enough to know we're not going to find anything too interesting here. So one possibility is we'll get some questionable photo from a satellite which will then have to be followed up by another satellite that will take a really long time to get there. Once it gets there it could get exciting, but we're probably talking years if not decades. And that's probably just to get more pictures.

If the life we find is technologically advanced the other reasonably likely possibility is we would find a communication from them, may or may not be directed to us, long before we found them. Would probably be found by something like SETI. So we'd find an odd radiation pattern. Then over a long time it would be confirmed - have to make sure it was computed properly and check that it is persistent and not caused by human activity. Even if it said something interesting it would take a long time to figure out what it says. Or it could just be the spectrum from something like a power plant rather than a communication. Anyway, that's all years right there, then figuring out a way to send a signal and them catching on and so on would be a really long time. So maybe at some point regular communication could be set up which would be exciting, although travel to them would probably be decades if not centuries away.

I have no idea why this occurred to me today. At first it just sounded like a silly idea, but now I'm actually kind of bummed out.

Above the lip

Does anyone else have a spot a little above their upper lip that is particularly sensitive to spice? For some reason this spot often ends up hurting more than the inside of my mouth. I totally get eyes being super sensitive, but that spot just seems like normal skin that shouldn't be more sensitive than say my cheek or nose. I do think it happens more when I cook, but it also sometimes happens just from eating spicy food. I assume I do something to cause the spice to touch the spot. But why is that spot so sensitive? I know there is stuff you can eat to help dull the spice, but what do you put on your skin to do it? I have found that ice or cold water helps, but only as long as the spot stays cold.

If I put seeds from hot peppers on that spot every day would it eventually stop being so sensitive? Would the change be permanent or would I have to do that all the time?

Euphemism

It seems like socialism is a bad word in the US (well, at least in parts of the US or for people pandering to parts of the US).

The word czar though is totally ok. It is ok to have a bailout czar, just as long as he doesn't do anything too socialist. Even though the word czar basically means king, which is definitely not an ok word in the US. Obviously the positions wouldn't get very far if they were called: Drug King, Copyright King, Bailout King, Terrorism King... Ok, czar is really closer to the word emperor, but same idea.

So isn't it time to just find a foreign word for socialism? I'm not saying the US should become socialist, but it would be nice to be able to discuss ideas that seem socialist. Maybe another good Russian word just to make it extra ironic.

Pity

I feel like my posts yesterday got a bit preachy. I want to balance it out with a clever/funny post, but I started feeling sick today so I'm not up for clever/funny. Instead I'll just go for pity.

But I will leave you with a little bit of knowledge - the whole sex through a hole in a sheet thing - false.

Uhhh - WTF?

I try not to do this many posts in a row, but WTF!

You gotta watch this.

After seeing this I wish I hadn't already voted so I could make the line next to Obama's name a little thicker (although the instructions said to make a thin line so maybe it is best that I already sent in my ballot).

Well, I used "WTF" so I feel compelled to link to this classic.

The Golden Chariot

Along the same line of reasoning as the last book, I read The Golden Chariot. This book is about a woman in a women's prison who learns the stories of the other prisoners and decides if they should join her on her ride in a Golden Chariot to heaven. This provides framing for telling the stories of several women dealing with various aspects of life in Egypt.

The idea behind this and the last book is to get a bit of a feel for the culture, although I worry that it might be like watching The Wire before a trip to the US. Although really what has happened is not that I've gotten a feel for the culture, but that I've started to erase what I thought I knew about it.

This may by kind of obvious, but here it goes. First of all, I think that most of my knowledge of the Arab world and of Islam is some ultra-simplified stereotypes. Such as, I get the feeling a lot of Americans, including myself, are proud of knowing Islam is split into Sunni and Shi'ite. Wow - good job. That's like knowing Christianity has Catholics and non-Catholics. Way to really dig in and learn about the countries we are occupying. Next thing you know, I will have learned the name of a few cities in Afghanistan! For Iraq I already know Baghdad and Fallujah - go me!

Another example is marriage - I'm not sure exactly what my previous conception of marriage in the Arab world was, but what I'm figuring out is it is really complicated. I'm not saying it is good or bad, largely because I don't understand it well enough. But even if Islam has some simple rules, there are many variations on how to apply those rules and varying degrees of following them. I think my previous thoughts were equivalent to looking at a small subset of abstinence only groups and calling that American/Judeo-Christian marriage.

Ok time for me to get off the soap box. I'll just end that rant (which was mostly aimed at myself) by wondering when I'll catch on that all other cultures and religions are large, complicated topics rather than needing to figure that out one by one.

Anyway, the book was ok - not as interesting as the previous one. But it does describe some fairly messed up situations (I'm sure by anyone's standards - not just me judging other cultures) so that keeps things interesting.

And, yes, I'm still dealing with that in my head all the characters are white issue.

The Said

The Saïd is a name for "Upper Egypt". "Upper Egypt" is the region SOUTH of "Lower Egypt". Ok, the upper and lower parts actually make sense if you think in terms of the flow of the Nile rather than North/South.

I want to go off on a rant about how translators should take the liberty of picking words and terms that don't conflict with existing words and that make sense in the language being translated to, but I worry that would come off a bit too ignorant so I'll settle for this meta-rant.

Update: After writing this I remembered that in general I dislike how languages are constructed (which helps explain the poorly formed sentences you have to get through to read this blog), so it doesn't make sense for me to single out translations.

Voting in CA

This post is just for CA voters.

Here are the Sierra Club's endorsements. Even if you're not that interested in who they endorse, it is worth checking their opinions on props 7 and 10. These claim to be pro-environmental, but the Sierra Club claims they would actually do more harm than good.

Oh and Democrats oppose 7 and are neutral on 10 and Republicans oppose both 7 and 10.

In this post I'm not trying to push people to vote a certain way, but I was surprised by this so I thought others would want to know.

Fight Club

Is anyone else reminded of Fight Club? At the end they literally implode the major financial institutions. While not as dramatic, it sort of seems like we're finding out what would have happened if they did it a bit more figuratively.

Here's the latest Despair poster which seems appropriate:

The Yacoubian Building

I guess the last post helps explain why I read The Yacoubian Building. It is about the residents of a building in Cairo and was the best selling Arabic novel in 2002 and 2003.

On the one hand reading the book seemed like a good way to get a bit of a feel for Egypt. On the other hand, the book is meant as a harsh criticism of the government and society so I imagine it is fairly exaggerated. The big message I got from it was how people lived their lives getting around the restrictions of religion and the government, and how those two push people's lives. Other than just trying to get a feel for the country, I think it is a good book on its own. A lot of it is about sex (married, homosexual, unmarried, paid, forced, pedophillia), religion, secret second marriages, greed, violence, politics, corruption, forced abortion, torture, terrorism (and for completeness, a tortured terrorist having sex because of religion) - topics that help to keep the pages turning and as you can imagine caused a bit of controversy in the Arab world. The building he picks has rich residents in the main building and poor residents living on the roof so he is able to cover a large number of perspectives and stories. The downside is that, like the show heros, it has so many characters and story lines I feel like there isn't as much of any one story line as I'd like.

One thing I learned about myself is that when I read, in my head all the characters are white by default, even if the book is set in Egypt.

Continent #4

I'm going to Egypt!!!

What if the Sun Went Away?

What would I do if I woke up one morning and there was no sun?

Well first I would get ready just like any other day since I normally don't see the outside till I walk out the front door.

Then there would be some checking of clocks and web searching to make sure the clocks were right and checking for news. Then maybe some phone calls to do a sanity check on the time and make sure others noticed the same thing.

Then what I think I should do is coordinate a meeting place with my family and make my way there while buying up supplies (especially canned food, water, gas, electric generator, maybe even weapons).

What do I think I'd really do? I think that if it was a week day I'd go to work.

I am disappointed with my hypothetical self.

Debate

I just watched the VP debate (it is up on hulu.com if you missed it). I did ok through most of it, but at a certain point I got that head about to explode feeling coming on. So I saved all but one of you from some of my rambling by using email instead of this blog to vent.

Although I do have to ask - what's with all the winking? Did anyone else find that a little uncomfortable?

And I know it is classic politics to answer a question without actually saying anything. But Palin has taken it to a new level where she can put together over a minute's worth of words that don't even mean anything! It's like the Chomskybot if it left out a few parts of speech. Whoa - I just figured out how to beat the Turing test! The turing test is if you ask questions of a computer and of a person and cannot tell which is which then the computer passes the test. As long as the person the computer is being compared against is Palin the computer could easily pass.

Oh and as everyone clearly knows - I'm a cowboy. I will continue to remind you that I am a cowboy until you start to believe it. As a cowboy and so speaking as a cowboy does, I will repeat my main point that everyone knows I am a cowboy. Sure, that may be the most absurd thing you've ever heard, us cowboys understand that, but nevertheless I have a proven track record of being a cowboy. It is so intuitively obvious that I am a cowboy, or should I say "cowboy obvious" *wink*, and everyone knows my record of being a cowboy so well that there is no point in bringing up a single example or fact indicating that I am a cowboy.

Finally (or it was finally the first time I wrote this post) - Biden is from Scranton - why isn't he bringing up The Office and, more seriously, why isn't the The Office incorporating him (or at least discussion of him) into the show?

Well to end this post *inappropriately timed wink* written by this cowboy I will simply ask you to remember that I am a cowboy. Now to say thank you over and over again as fast as possible while giggling, which is how cowboys act at the end of debates.

Preconditions

Ok, one more article. This one is describing a meeting of 5 former secretaries of state where they all agreed the next president should meet with Iran without preconditions.

Articles

Normally I try to avoid filling this blog with links to articles, but I'm breaking the rule today.

This is an interesting article on the economic situation and the betting strategy that "basically always" wins.

This is a list of basic computer tips - some are super obvious, but most are worth knowing.