The cat came back the very next 6 years- Austin

With Eric as my sole roadmate following Sean's departure in El Paso to go back to Michigan, we got in the car about 11 Am in the morning and said goodbye to the animal zoo that is my Mom and sister's house. With the desert surrounding us, we motored on past El Paso, on I-10, to Austin, on that road I am so familiar with. I love I-10; on various roadtrips, I have driven on its whole extent, all the way from Santa Monica, California, to Jacksonville, Florida.

Bopper has no air conditioning, and to those of you who have never been in West Texas in summer, recall the last time you used your oven. Know that blast of hot air that hits you everytime you open the oven to check on your food? Now imagine wind that feels like that....for 10 hours. I was "that guy" in the car driving without a shirt on. Eric and I could only drive 2-3 hour shifts in the heat before we became exhausted and would fall asleep for a bit while the other person would drive. Bopper, Eric, and I went through a lot of water on that leg.

We made it into Austin about 10:30 at night, and we stopped at the gas station on the edge of town where I would always stop I was an undergraduate. A fellow traveler on a motorcycle saw our little Tercel filled with gear, with the guitar to boot, and asked us if we were musicians for the biker festival (yeah, I wish, maybe there's a market for Johnny Cash impersonators). Turns out there was a huge biker festival in Austin the same weekend we were there, and lame ol' me thought "f**k, where are we going to stay? all the hotels are gonna be booked." Sure enough they were. We drove around for two hours in Austin trying to find a place to crash for the night. We even stopped at my old dorm and asked if they had rooms for "visiting scholars," cause, hey, I am an alumnus neuroscientists, and my roadmate is a molecular biologist. Didn't work.

But we finally found a hotel room by the highway for about $65, though only for the night, as the rate was going to shoot up to $150 once the biker festival swung into full tilt. We booked the room for the night, didn't even take our gear into the hotel room, and went straight away to my favorite live country music bar in Austin (Hole in the Wall) to try to catch the last bit of live music and have some Shiner Boch. We talked to some cool local struggling musicians over a couple pints, the night ended too damn soon, and we had to motor back to the hotel at 2 AM, with full excitement in our hears to be in another city but unable to be jubilant simply because we got in too late. But..in the hotel I received a text message from my old college girlfriend who was still working around in Austin, and we set up a lunch in for the next day.

Next morning, I got up, took a shower to wipe the days of grime from my skin, loaded the car, dropped Eric off on Central campus so he could surprise some old high school biology friends who went to UT for grad school, and I picked up my old college sweetheart. Twas an old feeling I've never felt before, almost like a country music song. I haven't spoken to this person in 6 years, but she still knows me pretty well, asking me about my research and family. We had a minorly awkward lunch at Threadgill's, a popular local soul food/ Southern restaurant, and the feeling that permeated the table was the unsaid thought running through my mind and probably through hers: "I am really glad to see you again, though I know the relationship is over, and it probably is a good thing the relationship is over." It's still very hard for me to describe in words what it felt like. Happiness and an odd sort of bittersweet nostalgia at the same time. After lunch, I dropped her off at her car as she had to go to her second job, and I said to her, "It was great seeing you. I do think about you, and I am glad we were able to hang out, at least for a little bit. This went well, considering the last time we spoke you said to me, 'This is it, Don't ever f**king talk to me again.'" She wouldn't admit she actually said that (that's what I seem to remember), but she did admit she probably felt that way, with a grin on her face.

After that, I wandered around my haunts on the UT-Austin campus. I walked by my old lab, but I found myself pausing and staring at the entrance, simultaneously wanting and not wanting to walk in and say hello to my old advisor. Given that I had defended but still technically was not a PhD due to the revision requirement, I couldn't bring myself to walk in. I stood outside the door to my old lab, stared at my old posters still on the wall, and I then slowly walked back down those stairs I used to walk down all the time. I excited the building where I decided to go to graduate school in the first place and went on to further explore the the old town.

Eventually I hooked up with Eric again, and ta da! turns out there is a hostel in Austin, and they had 2 beds available for the next two nights for $50 total. Damn that expensive! A hostel for $25 a night?! But whatever, we didn't have any other options, and it wasn't a big deal. The hostel was in a beautiful location on the Colorado river which some local water fowl liked to frequent as well.

Once we checked in, I convinced Eric to walk with me all the way to 6th Street, about three miles, to meet up with some high school friends. But..Damn! We didn't realize it was so hot and humid. I was badly sunburned to boot.

But we eventually made it out to a local watering hole where I met up with some friends I hadn't seen in seven years. Twas very nice. The dude in the orange shirt below, Lon, was actually my roommate during my college freshman orientation, and we also came from the same part of town in El Paso. I remember him getting mad at me for asking silly questions in our high school advanced Chemistry class. Praveen, the Indian gentleman on the right, was also a close buddy from high school who is now a successful computer engineer in Austin. Allegra, the gal on the bottom, was my best friend in college and high school (We were in plays together, and I also took her to my high school prom). She is now a budding film editor in Austin's cinema scene, and the gentleman on the left is her fiance. After a nice long dinner, some beers, and nostalgia where I wondered why the hell I left Austin in the first place, Lon, Eric, and I walked on over to the Congress Street bridge to see the bats fly out at sunset.

Austin has the largest urban bat population in the world. It's a big community event in the summer; many people hang out on the Congress Street bridge in the sunset hours. Sure enough, a few moments after the sun set, the beautiful creatures, all 1.5 million of them living under the bridge, began coming out in swarms.

After watching the bats, we headed out to famous 6th Street of Austin to see the night life and watch all the killer hogs motor down the street. We went to too many bars, and many of them I can't recall the names of; it's too easy to lose money down there.

But the hipster bartenders are a trip with the mix of tattoos and old style country facial hair.

We made the required stopover at Emo's, the indie-rock punk bar I used to frequent when I was an undergrad. The VHS tapes I am holding in front of Emo's were given to me by Lon, and the tapes consist of a bunch of videos my high school friends and I made when I used to live in Toledo. Lon told me, "I have moved multiple times since you first let me borrow these tapes when we were in high school 8 years ago, and everytime I moved, I said, "No, I can't throw these out. They are a part of Tim's youth, and I know, someday, I will see him again!" And indeed he did, and indeed he gave me the tapes. Truth be told, most of the movies I had copies of and have since transcribed to DVD. But there was one gem. As juniors in high school theology class, my friends and I made a video about, of all things, premarital sex. For our project, me and two of my classmates walked around the University of Toledo campus with a video camera we borrowed from the school, and we asked random college students what they thought of premarital sex. The responses were all over the place; the whole thing was rather cute in hindsight. I try to imagine if I was walking on the University of Michigan campus and some high school students interviewed me about premarital sex. What would my response be? Probably something like, "Use protection, and get it when you can, because life is transient, your beauty will fade, and one day you will be old, crusty, and retired, yearning for your salad days and, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said "the joy of losing your innocence over and over again."" But that may be a bit creepy.

And finally, when the night was over, as we all left the bars, Eric and I commenced to witness a quite unusual and beautiful sight: Two bombshell Texas gals engaging in some odd giddy conversation with a homeless alcoholic stammering drunk. I had to take a picture of these two worlds colliding, and one of the women turned to look at me at that exact moment. I love the smile and expression on her face, among other things.

Eric and I tried to get a cab back to the hostel, but with the bars closing, we failed, and we then walked for 2.5 hours, lost in the urban jungle trying to get back home. We had to cross the Colorado river but despite our damnest efforts we couldn't find the pedestrian bridge! I even considered swimming across, but Eric wisely convinced me not to. We doubled back, finally found the bridge, and got back into our hostel at 4:30 in the morning, completely exhausted.

I didn't even get a nice sleep. One of the drifters in the hostel, the type that travels for months on zero budget, woke me up at 8 AM to ask for a ride to the nearest town 20 miles away because he had found a job "distributing flyers" by the road, in the hot sun, for $100/day. Wow, I guess wanderlust is a powerful thing for some people; I would have headed home if I was in that much of financial dire straits. Feeling sorry for him, I agreed to get up and give him and his friend a ride.

Not much happened the rest of the day, as my legs were crazy sore from all the walking the day previous. Eric and I simply went to a local natural pool, Barton Springs, swam for a little bit, I played a little guitar, and we both napped and tried not to look at the jail bait.

For our last night in Austin, we decided, again, to go to Hole in the Wall. It's my favorite bar in Austin, a good music venue of alt-country and roots rock and roll, as well as just being an all around excellent chill dive bar. Allegra came by, and we all ended up playing shuffleboard with some pleasant NSF-REU students from Georgia visiting Austin for the summer.
While we were there we saw this emo dude sporting some serious bling. I really didn't know what to make of it. But that's not the interesting part.

The Emo Bling Dude actually tried to steal our pitcher of beer! As in grab it from the bar from us when we weren't looking steal our beer! The nerve! Maybe he thought his medallion entitled him to it, I don't know. So Elysse ( the NSF-REU geology student) and I pretended to talk about igneous rocks while Eric shot a picture of us standing behind him.

And soon enough, the night ended at the Hole in the Wall. I hadn't seen Allegra in 7 years, and we had a pleasant bittersweet goodbye. I was glad to meet her fiance; he's a film editor and they seemed pretty near perfect for each other.

And the next week they were married! Official Shot below.


Coming up Next: Getting Schooled in Memphis, or the Most Awesome Blues I have ever heard.

Socorro to El Paso to Juarez - The Desert Cities

After Denver, it was time to leave the Rocky Mountains and head south to the desert. We were trying to make it to the Very Large Array (from the Movie Contact) in Socorro before motoring on down to El Paso all in the same day. Most people who have never been to the West Texas / New Mexico area of the country have very little conception of just how damn beautiful it is. Open Country and Open Sky makes for an Open Mind.

Of course, some minor car problems prevented us from making it very far (like running out of gas), and we spent the night in Socorro, planning to go to the telescopes the next day.

We stopped at a tex-mex joint to eat and watch some of the Lakers/Celtics game, and Sean began chatting with some local fire fighters about what we were up to and our various adventures. We still weren't sure where we were going to stay for the night, and Sean in all his charismatic magic managed to get an offer for one of the firefighters rooms! The firefighters were doing a training exercise in Socorro, and they had about 5 rooms at the local Econolodge. Some of their crew were late, and they gave us one of the empty rooms for $30. After settling in, we invited them to our room for some beers, and we stayed up late into the night listening to them tell fire stories.

My favorite was "Don't ever cheat on a smart woman." A couple months previous, a woman had found out her husband was having an affair. So....she soaked the whole house with gasoline, put a piece of steel wool on the edge of the front door, and placed a 9V battery on the wall near the door jam. The cheating heart came home after a night of adultery, opened the door, the steel wool made contact with the 9 V battery, and..well..that was the end of that.

There were a bunch of other stories; their knowledge of chemistry and how things burn was rather impressive. I've personally never held any stereotypes about firefighters; it seems like an admirable enough public job to me, but they said multiple times: "Man, people think all firefighters do is play cards and watch porn. That's not true. This is hard ass work, with 48 hour shifts sometimes." But they did say, with all the administrative bulls**t and restrictions on their offjob behavior they have to put up with, the job is ultimately rewarding: Bringing people back to life never becomes mundane.

The next morning we woke up a little fogheaded, had some huevos rancheros at the local diner (where cowboy hats and the Spanish language are the norm), then we headed west on a small state road to the telescopes. I had visited them before with my family when I was in college, but I was totally down for seeing it again, and Eric and Sean had never seen them before.

I love big Science. Neuroscience is exciting and mysterious in its own obvious ways (as in, what makes us what we are?), but there is a much bigger question beyond the C-word: What is the nature of the universe? How old is it? How did it come about? In the desert, surrounded by beef cattle ranches, you come up on the plain and witness that functional monument to humanity's attempt to understand itself.

Of course, the happy nerd that I am, I had to channel Jodie Foster for a little while. Back in the day in early graduate school, when I spent a summer in California, I had a chance to meet the real scientist Jodie Foster's character is based on.

And after an hour viewing the big science, I thought maybe our neuroscience is not so interesting after all. It's an odd feeling, being in the desert amongst the telescopes...it's not as if you drive to the middle of New Mexico to see someone doing whole cell recording of a dorsal root ganglion. What I love about astronomy is that the instruments are always in your face....staring at you..taunting you...asking you..."What are you doing with your life? I am a tool to answer the grandest questions of all."

Eventually we got back into the car and made it down to El Paso by the late afternoon, and I had a happy reunion with my mother and sister. The last time I showed up in El Paso with my own wheels was eight years ago, when I was a junior in college. Every time since I have flown in, which always diminishes the distance. I am in Detroit, and 6 hours later I am in El Paso. On wheels and motors, I rolled in, covered in sweat, in a packed car, and having been on the road for two weeks. Obviously, arriving into El Paso in that fashion makes you realize how far away West Texas is from Michigan.

I hung out with my sister that evening, and I dropped the idea of going into Juarez, Mexico (the border city to El Paso, literally a couple miles from my house), because whenever I go back to El Paso, I like to spend an afternoon in Juarez, get something to eat, maybe buy some belts or clothes, grab a beer, and walk along the streets of the sad border town. But my sister was defiant. She would not come with me. She said, "Ay No! There's major gang wars going on now. The drug cartels sent an e-mail out to the cops saying no one would be spared. 40 people have been shot in broad daylight in the past month!" (I love the fact the drug cartels sent an e-mail. Subject: We are at war. Die?) But Sean and Eric, having never been there, really wanted to go, and we figured the US authorities at the border would tell us whether it was safe or not. So we drove the short drive from my house to the border bridge. The shaky movie below depicts the 30 ft boundary between Texas and Mexico...

And sure enough, when we crossed the pedestrian bridge, there were 18 year old military police with assault rifles watching everyone coming across the border (sorry, apprehensive Tim didn't take any pictures). The streets were noticeably vacant. During normal business hours you usually see many folks going about their business. The streets weren't dead, as in "let's get the hell out of here" dead, but I would say there was only about 30% of the normal foot traffic on the streets. No matter. It was so hot out anyway, we quickly forgot about the whole thing. But notice how few people are in the picture below...

After walking around for a bit, we decided to stop for a beer at the "Kentucky Club" on the main drag near the bridge and watch the Celtics/Lakers game. Twas a rather cool bar, with us drinking Sols, simply enjoying ourselves, and watching the Mexican businessmen with their "just a little too hot, and just a little too young" dates.

I am always a little on guard when I am in Juarez, and to tell you the truth, the only time I have been there at night was once in high school and a couple times at home from college. Having been around the world on many adventures, I hate to admit I get uncomfortable in a city so close to one of my hometowns, but Juarez is a den of pestilence and poverty, especially given the current climate with the drug wars. There's always stories of hueros being caught in the wrong place in the wrong time. The gal I took to my high school prom in El Paso actually had a friend who was shot and killed by random gunfire in one of the night clubs. So when the sun began to set, we walked back across the bridge, passed through border control, and arrived back in El Paso, Texas, land of the free and home of the brave.

As our last bit of fun before leaving West Texas, I suggested we stop at my favorite country & western bar close to my mom's house to hear some live country music. But...drat..that night was karaoke night, so we had to provide our own entertainment. Being somewhat of a drama queen who loves being on stage, I immediately signed up for a few songs. Below you can hear my rendition of David Allen Coe's "Long Haired Redneck."

I gave my mom and sister a call, and though it was late, they came out to join me and my friends. I convinced my Mom to come up with me and sing "Hard Day's Night" by the Beatles (when she was growing up, she remembers her parents really liking that song). We tried to get my sister to come up as well, but she's a bit shy about public performance. It felt so good to be back home, if only for a little bit...

Following the night at the bar, Sean parted ways with us and went home back to Michigan via bus ("bent to it again, gone. - Kerouac-). Eric and I went to bed, again too late, and again regretting the next morning when we would hop back into the car for another long ride to the next city...

Coming Up Next: The cat comes back. Seeing Austin again.

My Favorite Apollo Mission Picture

I am an avid enthusiast of space exploration history, and I've read a lot of books and seen a lot of pictures on the Apollo Program. But my favorite photograph of all is dusty Gene Cernan, the last man on the moon, after his last moonwalk.

In the Apollo Program, everything looked so clean and sterile and "mom and apple pie," in stark contrast to the Francis Darkes, the Lewis and Clarks, and the Edmund Hillarys who explored the far reaches of our planet. In books I've read of historical explorers (try Cabeza de Vaca's "La Relacion" if you want to read about some rough exploring), it's often painfully clear how dirty and uncomfortable explorers were most of the time.

That's why I dig this picture of Gene Cernan. I am sure Apollo astronauts get sick of being asked "What was it like to be on the moon?" and I think this picture explains perfectly what it was like. Gene is tired and covered in moondust, but he has such a peculiar expression on his face of pride, exhaustion, and satisfaction. Once I get into the next tax bracket I wouldn't mind buying a really nice large print of this and hanging it up on my wall.

Incidentally, the picture was taken by Harrison Schmitt, the other Apollo Moonwalker on that mission (the second to last person on the moon), and last year I got to see him in the flesh. He came up to the University of Michigan in early 2007 to give a seminar to the aeronautical engineering department. He waxed about the "experience" of being on the moon for about 4 minutes then delved deep into hardcore lunar geology. Mad Scientist Respect. "Cool. We are on the moon. Let's get to work. We have only a short amount of time." It was inspiring being in the same room as the scientist explorer (forgive my sloppy camera work).



I really wanted to ask a question at the end on the future of manned spaceflight, so I could tell my grandkids one day, "Yes, I did speak with one of the moonwalker explorers," but other people were asking him serious geology and mission design questions (the room was full of graduate students and faculty of geology and aero/astro engineering), so out of respect for the scientific environment I sat there listening to it all and soaking it up. Oddly, I e-mailed my whole lab and all the neuroscience students here at Michigan, saying "this is a once in a lifetime opportunity! There's only nine of the twelve left, and they're probably going to begin passing on within the next decade!" But only one person (Schlomo, a recent PhD graduate and a previous owner of my car Bopper), came to the talk with me. Some people even told me they couldn't go because they had class, which has got to be the lamest excuse ever. If I were a professor, I would be mad if people actually came to my class if an Apollo astronaut was on campus. S**t, I would cancel class!

Obviously most people aren't as into this stuff as I am, so I can accept that. It actually explains a lot about the current state of NASA among my generation; most people in my age group/demographic (beyond engineers, obviously) simply really don't care that we have a space program at all. Because, let's face it, the shuttle program and space station isn't really that exciting. Even current shuttle crews will admit that they'd rather be out exploring the solar system than circling the Earth. Someday we may all be inspired again, but it may come from the likes of Burt Rutan and the Google X-Prize, even though both are still not as amazing as Apollo was.

As a final point, Harrison Schmitt is most likely the photographer of the most famous, and most used, photograph on the planet. of the planet actually. It's not known for sure, as the entire crew shares credit for every single photograph taken on the mission, but rumor has it Schmitt was the one who clicked the shutter.
This view of Earth had never been seen before by anyone prior to this photograph. The sun was just perfectly behind the spacecraft of Apollo 17, and the Earth was in the just right position, to illuminate the whole hemisphere.

Through Moab on to Denver

After concluding my rafting trip in Oregon, I met up with my roommate Sean and labmate Eric in Salt Lake City. They had been on a roadtrip of their own through Montana, and now we were linking up to begin the phase of our respective roadtrips together. Sean and I, having read "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac probably about six or seven times in college (I had it on book tape and would listen to it when I would drive back and forth from El Paso to Austin), both wanted to see Denver for a weekend night and walk down the famous Market and Larimer streets of Kerouac's and Ginsberg's haunt. So, we decided to drive southeast to see Arches National Park, camp a night, then swing east to Denver. After some minor car troubles in Provo, Utah, we motored as fast as we could to reach Moab (the site of the Arches National Park), in time for sunset. And....we ....just...made...it...in...time!

I have seen enough pictures of this park in enough National Geographic magazines to give me a "this Earth is beautiful" overload, but, oh how quickly urban cynicism melts away in the face of ancient grandeur! Over hundreds of millions of years the wind has eroded the red rock into spectacular shapes. You need to go. Kill that silly Europe trip (it's too expensive anyway).

You can see Sean looking into the canyon below, and me almost camouflaged in the center of the picture. We raced up the trail to see the famous delicate arch before night fell.

And there it is. The famous "delicate arch" that is on the Utah license plate and on the cover of almost every road atlas ever printed. The sun set just as we reached it.

All the campsites were full, so we stayed that night at a very cool hostel in Moab. It was only eight dollars for a dorm style bed, and we stayed up drinking beers with the other guests. Some of the guests were aimless young wanderers that were hard to talk to. One young man had actually just quit his summer job and was hitchhiking across the country, trying to make it up to Alaska so he could visit the famous bus Christopher McCandless lived and died in. Wow...talk about morbid. Now, I loved the movie and book "Into the Wild", and I did relate to Christopher, but the whole "society is bullshit" mentality is incredibly sophomoric. Anybody who thinks that way and is older than 17 has become mentally stale. Come to think of it though, the dude at the hostel hitchhiking was about 17/18...

But I digress. I enjoyed talking to some professors and undergraduates at the hostel who were doing field research on local beetles, and some of the international people on vacation were interesting (and pretty) as well. 

I wish there was more of a hostel culture in the U.S, as staying at motels and hotels is incredibly bland. You check it, go to your room, and that's it. When I've been in a car for 12 hours, it's great to simply have some beers and chat with people. At a motel though, there's rarely anyone in the lounge. But at a hostel, it's almost expected that you hang out in the common area and talk to the other travellers. 

Early the next morning, we decided to take a local state road for part of the way to Denver. The road follows the Colorado River for a few hundred miles. I can't look at the picture below without wanting to simply get in my car and do it all over again...

And, as I've written about before, the car was a little cramped, especially for the person in the back seat.. 

And after we reached the end of the road and started getting close to Colorado, we had to do a map check in the middle of nowhere. Thank god Bopper only broke down on me in Ohio...

Once we reached Colorado, we decided to make a pit stop in Vail just to see this famous city that always seemed to be printed on the sweatshirts of students in my high school and college after a winter vacation. What is this magical place where rich people go?

Oh my God...It's like a Mountain Dew commercial. Don't...ever....go. I didn't take many pictures, but imagine anybody you know who is really into outdoor adventures, but in an annoying way. Now imagine a whole city full of people like that! Folks covered in Spandex, drinking Sobe, riding overly expensive bikes, wearing overly expensive workout apparel. Couples in their 30's with no kids but with their expensive pedigree dog as a fashion accessory and child replacement. Sorority Girls and Boys that look they came out of a machine. Expensive boutique stores. Overpriced food and drink. Needless to say, we only stayed about an hour for a some people-watching, and then we ran away to Denver.

Bopper had to really struggle to make it through the the Vail Pass and the Eisenhower tunnel to cross through the continental divide and head into Denver. The Eisenhower Tunnel is the highest tunnel in the world at ~11,000 feet. You actually drive above the treeline, it gets rather cold, and you find yourself a little lightheaded. The experience is second only to driving up Mona Kea (13,500 ft)  in Hawaii to see the telescopes.

We finally made it into Denver and checked into the local hostel. The Denver hostel was weird. The guy at the desk went on for five minutes about where all the local churches were if we wanted to go to service in the morning, followed by a story about how just the day before a local 8 year old had shot and killed two burglars robbing her house when her parents were gone. But...with some hand wringing, he finally told us where the local watering hole was, and after checking into the storage room where we would stay for the night, we headed into town.

Downtown Denver is a pretty happening place. There are lots of clubs, lots of restaurants, and lots of people just milling about. We went a few bars on the Market Street, I annoyed Sean by constantly reciting poetry by Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and then I split from the group to go to the punk bar "Benders" which a cute hipster waitress had recommended to me.

I had quite an experience at the bar. I wrote a poem about it even. Once I put it to music I'll post it here. Let's just say it involves an Indian goddess tattoo and crossed paths.

Coming up: On to New Mexico....

April Fools Advisor Joke

At last year's April Fools Day, my labmates and I decided to play a prank on our advisor.

Daryl Kipke is perhaps best known for running the Center for Neural Communication Technology here at the University of Michigan. This Center manufactures the well known "Michigan" probes, which are tiny silicon brain electrodes made using printed circuit technology. A couple years ago, while the Center was in an odd spot in between grants and funding cycles, Daryl and some former students in the lab spun off the technology into a start-up company, NeuroNexus technologies.

The company is now doing very well, and it is pretty much a success story of technology transfer from basic University Research Engineering in the 80's and 90's to a healthy local company. However, since all the designs and fabrication processes are well documented and published in the science/engineering literature, what's to stop a competitor from making the same probes and selling them for less?

Boom. April Fools Day Prank is set. My friend Greg designed a website that convincingly depicted a Chinese start-up company named NeuroNextStep making the EXACT same probes, but for almost 20% of NeuroNexus's price! In fact, the most expensive probe  on NeuroNextStep's website (a 64 channel chronic polyimide probe that is $225) is still cheaper then NeuroNexus's cheapest probe (an acute 16 channel probe -$290). 

You can see the website looks very legitimate. It's not until you click on the "Chinese Version" link that the April Fools banner pops up (the April Fools link on the side bar was only added later when the gig was up). My friend Luis made a bogus press release and forwarded it to one of the NeuroNexus employees (Rio), with the idea that the website would find its way up to Daryl.

Rio's response was great. "I took those pictures! How could they be so blatant? They stole the damn pictures straight off our own website!" He then went upstairs to find Daryl, but along the way ran into one of us who couldn't keep a straight face, and he realized it was a joke. Becoming a true confederate, Rio forwarded the NeuroNextStep website and press release to the rest of the company.

From: Rio Vetter  

To: Daryl Kipke; David J. Anderson; Jamie Hetke; Kc Kong

Subject: URGENT!!

Holy crap, check this out guys.  We’ve joked about this, but can you believe it?



Johnson & Johnson to Acquire NeuroNextStep.

Beijing, China

April 1, 2007 - Johnson & Johnson Inc. (NYSE: JNJ; 
www.jnj.com) has agreed to acquire Beijing-based NeuroNextStep 
Technologies, an innovative medical device company, for approximately 
$52 million in up-front cash and JNJ stock, plus potential 
performance-based consideration. The acquisition will strengthen JNJ's 
global marketplace and medical device platform, while opening several 
new lines of business and creating significant new monetization 
opportunities for the company. The deal also represents a major 
opportunity for NeuroNextStep to advance its leadership in neural 
intervention strategies and offer people worldwide new ways to overcome 
neurological disabilities in a new era. NeuroNextStep and JNJ will 
create an unparalleled medical device solution  for neurologists and 
neurosurgeons around the world to provide their patients.

"The brain is the next frontier in medical device products," said 
William C. Weldon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JNJ. "By 
combining the leading medical franchise, JNJ, with the leader in 
intracortical neural probe technology, we will create an 
extraordinarily powerful solution for neurosurgeons worldwide."

Founded in 2005 by Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee, NeuroNextStep 
offers intracortical neural probes that may be the key to solving a 
plethora of neurological disorders such as paralysis and blindness. The 
NeuroNextStep probes are microfabricated similarly to microprocessors, 
and enables electrical and chemical brain activity to be recorded and 
processed by external computer equipment. NeuroNextStep provides its 
probes at a low-cost compared to similar North American products. 
Upcoming product innovations include polymer-based and microfluidic 
devices.

One of the fastest growing and innovating companies in the field, 
NeuroNextStep already has customers in Australia, New Zealand, and 
Great Britain. NeuroNextStep is currently adding approximately 15 
customers per month and has created a thriving ecosystem of products. 
NeuroNextStep is considered the market leader in virtually all 
countries in which it does business. In Australia alone, NeuroNextStep 
has more users than any other neural device provider. 



Daryl's e-mail response when he saw this?

"[inappropriate for blogger]...My heart is beating 10x faster than it should. You got me. Now [in appropriate for blogger]"

It all cooled down rather quickly and Daryl and everyone laughed about it by the end of the day. Daryl said "With sweaty hands, I had my phone out, and was dialing the number of my lawyer, literally about to call him, when I randomly clicked on the "Chinese Version" link and realized it was a prank. "

Once Daryl found out Greg was the owner of the website, Greg received an unusual call from him. Mind you, Greg was a few beers deep at a Detroit Tigers game when he received the call. The content of that call is unknown.

All in all, nothing serious happened, and the prank became part of lab lore. We still make idle plans to make polo shirts of the company. I'd love to have a coffee mug of NeuroNextStep.

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