Adventures of a Discoverer

It is a natural process in most humans: ears produce wax, that wax tends to accumulate in the ear canal, and eventually that messes up your hearing. There are some ways to deal with that yourself: q-tips, ear drops, etc. Recently, though, a company here in Redmond is offering... an ear car wash. The "car wash" in the name is just to give the idea of a process where your ear canals can be quickly and easily cleaned, like a real car wash cleans cars. The procedure is based on a device that looks like a really big pair of headphones: a nurse fills the "headphones" with water and then adjusts them on your head. Once started, the device pumps lukewarm water at some pressure in your ear and collects all that comes out, which includes the wax in your ear canal and anything else that may be obstructing your hearing. I tried the process today. You have to schedule a time, but once in the clinic the process is indeed quick. The device was adjusted to my head and activated, an...

For quite a long time, when people needed to get some extra energy, they would drink coffee. Some decades ago an alternative was created: energy drinks, like the original one, Red Bull. They can be more powerful than coffee and now there is an incredible amount of brands and types of energy drinks available, if you need to get just a little bit more (or a lot more) energy. Recently, though, yet another alternative is available: caffeine pouches. As you may know, caffeine is the substance in coffee that gives that jolt of energy that people like. When energy drinks were invented, people realized that you could concentrate caffeine and put it in a drink like a soda, and that became even more popular. Then, in the last year or so, someone had an idea: why not put the caffeine in a pouch, which you can keep behind your upper lip, and slowly release caffeine for a long period of time? And with that we got the caffeine pouch. I recently bought a batch from one of the most popular brands to t...