Dentistry going increasingly high tech

moiraj posted in her blog about having a root canal and the doctor talking about robots in Dentistry. I seem to have the weirdest dental luck: it seems that I only have things go weird with my teeth when I'm traveling. September of last year I was in Colorado for a few days, 600 miles from home, and almost a week from when it would be possible to see my local dentist, and a filling cracked and fell out. It didn't cause any problem -- heat or cold sensitivity -- but my tongue wouldn't leave the irregularity alone. At one point I was out doing errands, and while getting in my car and leaving one store I noticed a dental practice. I decided that I had nothing to lose and they might be able to take a look at my tooth, so I went in.

And they saw me immediately. Well, almost immediately, after I did all the paperwork crap.

They did an x-ray, and unfortunately didn't do anything about the tooth as they estimated that I only had about a millimeter of material and if they were to breech that, I'd require a root canal. So they did nothing.

But the tech was cool. They had digital x-rays, which I'd seen before, but they showed them to me on a tablet, which was cool.

But that wasn't the really cool part. They had a computer-controlled milling machine for making crowns. They had blanks about the size of an array of teeth, they'd put a blank in the machine, and it would start cutting out the excess material. I'm curious if they did an impression of the tooth to be replaced and it did 3-D tracing to get the contours right, or what it did.

I'm not sure what I think about actual robots in dentistry, it would have to have some very good fuzzy logic to respond to vocalizations for pain or if the patient twitches or moves.

I haven't posted about Prince

mainly because I never really followed his music. I know he was talented, but I'm pretty firmly rooted in '70s/'80s rock. Maybe I'll pick up a copy of 1999 some day.

Anyway, I do have one Prince story that I can relate, not that it's personal. It involves Stevie Nicks song, Stand Back. The bass line was done by Prince, but it was done in a peculiar way. He arrived at the studio and told everyone to get out. He laid down the track and left the mix for Stevie the next day. When she heard it, she was pissed. She expected him to play it on a bass guitar, instead he programmed a synth to play it.

I find that kind of amusing. But to be honest, I much prefer Christine McVie to Stevie.

NPR's Fresh Air podcast had a recent interview with Questlove, the head of the band The Roots who are the band for The Tonight Show. Questlove met Prince on several occasions and told some very good stories. If you're interested, you can find a link to download it here.