https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-l...e-date/2860983

3:03

So I just got done watching this.

Basically, we have several different stories in which a medical device or procedure greatly improved the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people, but produced significant complications or adverse reactions in around 0.05% - 0.1% of patients.

In most human endeavors, that would be considered a massive success.

But in medicine, that tenth of a percent seems to want to deny the benefits of the treatment to the 99.9% of everyone else for whom it is safe, effective, and often life-saving.

I'm no stranger to bizarre and all-consuming medical problems. My sister has Cystic Fibrosis, a genetic disorder which has so very many different effects that you should just google it. She's had many, many surgeries, including a double lung transplant, and is on more medications than a typical 80 year old diabetic with hypertension. She has already way outlived the actuarial tables, so statistically speaking, she should theoretically drop dead later this evening or early tomorrow morning. (I'm hoping that she doesn't, but that's what the numbers say.)

But, at a certain level, that's just how life is. Some people draw the short stick, and get totally and repeatedly fucked up the ass by it. In my family, that's just normal.


What disturbs me is when other short-stick patients, whose misfortune is due to a roll of the dice in the medical world rather than a roll of the genetic dice, make it their life's passion to ensure that none of the hundreds of thousands of people who could otherwise benefit from the treatment which by sheer and massively improbable coincidence happened to harm them, can do so.


I'm not unsympathetic to people who were injured by a medical device or procedure. I understand what it's like to be in a "my life totally sucks because of X medical condition" situation. I just wish that it was possible for a sense of perspective to enter the dialogue.

That was probably the original genesis of the phrase.

In my memory, it was spoken more calmly, and followed by "I had no wood, you see."

Also, I haven't watched SNL since the Aykroyd / Belushi era.

This applies to everything in our polarizing times now.

For example, your sister puts my better half's struggle into perspective. Also that's incredible and heartbreaking at the same time, goes to show how strong the will the survive is ingrained in our DNA.

It's taken two years, multiple tests, blood work, Xrays, etc, to find out she has been diagnosed with a severe form of RA. Unfortunately, the insurance companies force people to use an old chemo medicine, to ensure it doesn't work, before allowing them to use the biologics like Humira.

I'm thankful that I'm able to have her on my insurance even though we aren't married, domestic partner and all that. Those pens are HORRIFICALLY expensive. And within a few months we will see if she needs to go from 1 every 2 weeks, to 1 every week. They are something like $2000 EACH and we don't even have a co-pay for them.

Here you go. "Everything"...
https://www.miataturbo.net/insert-bs...e2/#post795071

It was definitely in reference to some kind of Beavis and Butthead, but you're on your own beyond that.

Congrats !!! :party:

Yay!
I am really happy for you.

Roger that.

He'll be wrestling steers before you know it.

The Future of Public Transit by Cato Event Podcast
https://player.fm/1tEqln #nowplaying

^ Returns an error.

And what's funny is that the error is kind of relevant to something which happened to me today. I signed off on a purchase order from one of my engineers to procure a new set of four 12AT7 vacuum tubes.

The last time I checked, the year was 2018. Why, oh why, am I buying fucking vacuum tubes?

Remember the movie "Back to the Future Part III"? Yeah. That came out in 1990, and the fact that vacuum tubes were required to repair the time machine was a gag even back then. People who were born AFTER that joke was funny are grandparents now. (Hopefully not too many of them, but the statistics say that they exist.)

Answer: because we have some esoteric piece of sound-processing equipment in the band-mixing studio which uses them. And, apparently, it would be completely impossible to create television without that specific piece of equipment.

TUBES!

Have I sufficiently conveyed how annoyed I am by this?

Hey, some people pay $10K to buy home stereo amplifiers with tubes in them.

Also, on the not-quite-so-insane side, ISTR that solid state basically doesn't exist for big-ass RF transmitters? Don't you have some of those in your building too? Or are they up on a nearby mountain? Do they have mountains in Chicago? I guess not.

--Ian

I had to look up the word esoteric. First time I've ever seen that. I feel dumb. I also feel dumb because I have two tube amps in my house.

:eek4:

I have an old '70s tube amp for my guitar. It has a warmer sound.

I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with the link. It's an interesting discussion and I wanted to share it.

Edit: I think I fixed it

The Future of Public Transit by Cato Event Podcast
https://player.fm/1tEqln

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...90f6c46ee6.jpg

*I know they're glass, but the repetitive use of tubes reminded me of this.

I am having the welder guy here at work make end tables out of the square tubing I originally purchased for a Locost project many years ago. The dream is dead.

It used to be.

In the analog era, big UHF transmitters routinely operated at 1 Mw or more. To do that required a Klystron, an inductive output tube, or a travelling-wave tube, which are more like linear accelerators than triodes. They create a focused electron beam and then modulate it with electromagnets. (A conventional grid would be instantly vaporized at those power levels.) These were "tubes" in a sense that most people wouldn't recognize. Giant metal cylinders with plumbing fittings on them.

With DTV, we can run much lower power levels, so it's become practical to use solid-state amps. There are still a lot of tube-based transmitters in service, but nobody's building new ones anymore. AM transmitters were the first to go solid-state (they've been making those since the 80s), then FM and VHF went solid-state in the 90s, and UHF, radar and satellite transmitters have been migrating to solid-state since the early 2000s.

I do still have three TWT satellite transmitters left in service, and I've submitted a capital request to replace them next year.

Aside from that, both of my on-air transmitters are solid-state. This is accomplished by simply arraying large numbers of small amplifiers, and combining them. As a result, the solid-state transmitters are still a lot larger than their old tube-based ancestors, and ironically, the first ones were actually somewhat less efficient. But the increased power bill is more than offset by the improved reliability and decreased maintenance cost.

Here's my main transmitter at Sears, which outputs 20.5 Kw:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7fa895d3a6.png

Each one of those horizontal modules is a pull-out tray which contains six small amplifiers which are combined together to make around 400-500 watts per tray. Then all sixteen trays in each cabinet get combined together to make around 6,500-7,000 watts per cabinet, and then the three cabinets get combined to make the final 20.5 Kw. (The left-most cabinet is just the modulators, controllers, and first-stage amps.) This unit around 18 years old. Newer transmitters are more efficient and smaller, particularly the ones which use water-cooling of the amps.

Joe does it bother you that the horizontal front covers have slight variations in their gray?

Also once I got a pretty solid tour of the Stanford Linear Accelerator and got to put my hand on the copper tube of one of the accelerators. They also had plenty of klystrons there. And Very Thick concrete doors. Neat tour.