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.