Stolen phone

I'm home for Chinese New Year and got pickpocketed in the street outside Chowrasta Market =P Bye-bye G1, it was a good year.

On the off-chance anyone should happen to see a dark brown G1 for sale in Malaysia - it's basically the same model as the HTC Dream, but rebranded as the T-Mobile G1 for the US market. It says T-Mobile on the front and "T-Mobile G1" on the boot screen, so it's quite obviously different from any locally available Dream. Also, it has some deep dings on the upper corners from falling out of my pocket while cycling. The IMEI number was 355751020243613. I will give a decent cash reward if it's returned.

Changed all my passwords for the applications which I had used on that phone, btw.

Response to "My Monkey" and "Monkey business" letters

This is a response to an article on nonhuman primate testing in the Isthmus weekly and the follow-up letters in this week's issue, all but one of which were extremely anti-animal testing.

Animal rights groups like to portray scientists as sadists torturing large numbers of animals. This is a pretty stupid accusation if you know anything about how animal testing really works, because a) the damn things are expensive. People buy pet store mice for less than a buck. If you had to pay $40 for a mouse, you would treat it very nicely, and you also wouldn't go out and buy several dozen of them unless you had a very good reason. Primates cost THOUSANDS. b) You get better data out of a group of healthy, happy animals than a group of animals where some are OK and some are sick or hurt. If - if - all of the stuff that the guy wrote in that article was true, the monkeys get worse treatment than our mice.

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Dear Editors,

“We shouldn't test drugs on monkeys because 92% of drugs that pass nonhuman primate studies fail in clinical trials" is specious because the occurrence of adverse side effects that can be allowed for a human drug is so extremely low. Human clinical trials involve dozens, hundreds, then thousands of people. If for instance 0.5% of them have heart attacks, this is unacceptable but wouldn't have been detected in a study of a dozen monkeys, even when the drug has the same effect on monkeys as humans.

The only alternative would be to take drugs only tested in vitro or in mice and put them straight into humans, which I don't think would be acceptable to anyone. Of course there are some alternative medicine fans who believe that most of modern medicine is a conspiracy, but the vast majority of people reading this will have benefited from modern drugs and other therapies at some point in their lives, and all of these have been tested in animal models.

Yes, a monkey is not the same as a human, nor is a mouse. But with our existing technology, no amount of testing in vitro can replicate the fantastic complexity of a live creature, so they're the best we've got. Scientists are not sadists out to torture the maximum number of animals. We are workers with limited budgets to keep expensive animals, and humans with hearts. "Reduce, refine, and replace" is in
everyone's interest, but replacement is not always possible.

Sincerely,

I noticed that Rick Bogle (founder of the Primate Freedom Project) used the word "vivisectors" in his letter. "Vivisection" harks back to the days when people would tie up and cut up screaming animals without anaesthesia because many people believed that animals weren't actually capable of feeling pain. Nobody believes that any more, and any good IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) will reject out of hand a protocol that includes severely painful procedures - basically, anything worse than a blood sample or an injection - without anaesthesia. Even leaving aside that many people go into biology because we like animals, putting an animal under that much suffering would give you screwy results from the stress.

I strongly recommend reading CS Lewis' essay "On Vivisection" especially if you're Christian. I think this is the full version, many of the other versions floating around the Internet been selectively chopped up and censored. He writes about the tremendous sense of awe and responsibility which a Christian researches owes to God's creatures on whom he or she is inflicting pain. (He uses "trembling awe" but I certainly don't want to be trembling when I give a little baby chick an intravenous injection.)

"Reduce, refine, replace"; scientific reasons for minimizing pain and stress; the divine mandate to take care of Creation. Because of the world we live in, we have to keep using animals, but keeping all these things in mind.

USCIS

USCIS = United States Confusing International Students.

Just mailed in OPT app so I can work this summer and get all my experiments wrapped up and written up. The fee went up from $130 in 2005 (when I finished undergrad) to $340 this year. Basket. Potatoboy is leaving the country for Singapore on Monday and has yet to submit the Petition for Alien Fiancé(e). That's $455. After that gets approved, then I can file for the fiancee visa, which is another $455.

Moral of the story: don't marry foreigners.

It annoys the hell out of me that we have to provide a lot of proof that we've known each other for at least two years. The exceptions are for International Marriage Broker Agencies, a.k.a. mail-order bride services. In other words, some uneducated bimbo and some male chauvinist pig who thinks you can buy a woman can get married more easily than two MS holders who've known each other for years and have been dating for two and a half.

Tangentially, we watched The Civilization of Maxwell Bright a few weeks ago and it was a surprisingly moving film, but supported my prejudice that men who mail-order brides are losers.

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Yes, we're engaged, and yes, I've been deliberately not making any big announcements about it. The people who need to know, know (except my grandpa who doesn't have email and whom I keep forgetting to write to), and if I didn't tell you already it's none of your damn business.

I had the brilliant idea of trying to commission an engagment ring through Etsy's Alchemy app. We got two bids, the seller whose bid I accepted took two weeks longer than his stated deadline and the ring looked like crap. We got a refund. Moral of the story: look carefully at an artist's prior work and sales record before doing that kind of thing. We ended up buying an already-made ring that I really liked (and it's argentium silver so it should be pretty tough) and I'm hoping it arrives in the mail today.

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I have way too much stuff going on. I'm defending on May 26th. My advisor is busy with another round of grant proposals. I have to mow my [landlady's] lawn and I can't figure out how to start the mower. Tomorrow I have to take Lina to the vet for her annual rabies booster. The only thing I'm happy about is that our luciferase virus works in chicks (and they're adorable).

Shadow Cabinet lineup

If Sirul and Azilah deserve the death sentence, so do the men who ordered them to carry out the murder. "Right, we're just going to go and kidnap and shoot this random Mongolian woman we've never met and who conveniently happens to be the ex-mistress of a certain top politician and his buddy..."

Anyway, I'm not too happy with the new Cabinet lineup, so here's my Shadow Cabinet:

• Prime Minister: Lee Adama
• Education: Laura Roslin
• Defence: William Adama
• Home Affairs: Romo Lampkin
• Foreign Affairs: Kara Thrace (unusual style of diplomacy; knows the way to Earth)
• Transport: Galen Tyrol (proven very good at holding ancient creaky vehicles together; can build luxury car from scratch, no need import Mercedes)
• Women, Family, and Community Development: Sharon Agathon
• Tourism: Caprica-Six (look what happened the last time she visited another place)
• Science, Technology and Innovation: Gaius Baltar


• Human Resources: Cavil (just kidding!)