In my life I find that things usually turn out for the best despite my best intentions or stupidity. This follows through to the simple, but important things such as ordering supplied for my research. My current main project focuses on the study of phosphotyrosine signaling in human mammary epithelial cells under different growth factor stimulation conditions. Phosphotyrosine is a vital signaling mechanism, but there isn’t that much of it hanging around to measure. To get around this each condition I test we use 20-30, 100 sq. mm cell plates. Do five or 6 different conditions and you can see that you’re talking a ton of work for the person who grows up the cells (thanks again Lee!). All said it’s a good 3-4 weeks before you have the samples in a situation where they are stable enough to wait to do an immunoprecipitation (IP) and then LC-MS analysis. That said you can see why there is little room for error since it expensive and laborious to redo the experiments because of errors.

Ordering supplies is annoying. To fully appreciate my irritation I’ll explain how we order things at my company. There are two ways to order supplies . Anything that must be listed in the chemical inventory database is ordered through our online space and safety management system everything else is done on the old paper-based system. A few weeks back they changed the ordering policy and non-chemicals, like proteins and plasma, can no longer be ordered on the online system. The online system is usually faster and everything ordered through the system is sent to one person ina building who notifies you when your items comes in (after they’ve entered it into the inventory system). With the other ordering system the package is just dropped off to the room you specify with no notification that it’s arrived.

A few weeks ago I ordered my antibody. Yesterday I got a phone call from one of our sample prep staff members (she’s in the lab daily) saying a package had been on my bench for the last day. When I got down to the prep lab I found my antibody, at room temperature. This is death to an antibody. I called the company and the product manager confirmed my suspicions. So there was $1560 down the drain and I ordered 3 more boxes of 10 tubes. Later in the day I get an email saying that the price I listed for the antibody was for the small box of 5. I had specified the box of ten. I’d gotten the price from my previous order, which meant either I ordered the wrong box or who even input the order into the system made an error. When I went down to the lab and checked my antibody I found I had 15 botched tubes. So, had I not ordered more antibody I most likely wouldn’t have noticed that I only had half of the materials that I needed and I’d have 30 botched tubes instead of 15. It takes a least a week to get supplied in and it will take me 2 weeks to finish analyzing my experiments.

So, I wasted $1.5 K, but now I have everything that I need. At least it worked out in the end.

“Jokes for Nerds” time. My friend (and former roommate) passed this on from the last AAAS conference in Boston. You have to love AIR. The original article: Chicken, Chicken: Chicken, Chicken.

Might be the best “coughing up a heart” video I’ve ever seen:
Mine to give (sorry, couldn’t embed). From Annaliese Rittershaus at RhinestoneMedia.

Oh, almost forgot, Happy Valentine’s Day.

Sometimes coincidence brings the best moments. I wish I could take credit for the picture and since the site in is Norwegian I’ll just link the original page.

A friend of a friend tells me that the caption roughly translates as: “Toilet visit from the north. Large (species?) relieves itself in the Bogstad Lake. Burnt-out cheek annoying, but just a little”

I’ve been stuck in airports before, seldom overnight. As luck would have it my connecting flight back to Pennsylvania was canceled. The best alternative I could find was a flight out to the next closest airport and a train ride back to my home town. All of that’s pretty normal for this time of year.

The reason for my post. If you are even stranded in the Chiacgo O’Hare airport seek out the cot farm near security screening. You might get a spot if you get in early. I tried to get my 4 hour power nap started around midnight CST. At 4 am they will start clearing out the cots while every body is still asleep. In all fairness a woman did warn me there was a 4 am wakeup call. Below is about half the cots that were set up, most were full when I woke up.

Last night I went to the Camerata Musica concert given by the Finisterra Piano Trio from Seattle. I’d not heard of this group before and they are relatively new on the scene having just formed in 2003. The artists in the group, Tanya Stambuk (pinao), Kwan Bin Park (violin), and Kevin Krentz (cello), are all excellent musicians in their own right and each have an impressive resume. The program consisted of Beethoven’s Trio in Bl flat Major, Opus 11, Dvoraek’s Trio in E Minor, Opus 90/B166 “Dumky”, and a new composition by Daron Aric Hagen (commissioned for the Trio), Piano Trio No 4: Angel Band.

The execution of all of the pieces was flawless. Finisterra was simply in-sync with each other. You call tell when a group has chemistry. All of the artists have a level of physical expression and you can see that they are just enjoying every moment of their performance, just a joy to watch. This carries over into their musical expression and each piece of the evening has a life of its own. Beethoven never disappoints as you would expect. The Davoraek I had not heard before and was six “fleeting thoughts” inspired by Eastern European folk music, but of his own composition. The gem of the evening was the work by Hagen, an American composer who has studied with other greats such as Copland and Burnstein. The work chronicled the life if the matriarch of the family who commissioned the work. The first half of the work centered around a Southern hymn (remicent of some of Edgar Mayer’s work) and they migrated in to a purely modern work. Quite good, you can hear it for yourself on Finisterra’s website.

I expect a bright future for this ensemble. They are young and eager to share their passions with audiences and you should catch one of their concerts if you have a chance.

The lovely comedy group of consisting of John Bird, Rory Bremmer, and John Fortune specialize in political satire. The acts that I’ve been able to find have been stand up, impersonations, and a series of interviews with “important people.” The mock interviews are my favorite so far. The humor is spot on and deadpan, just my cup of tea. Of interest so far are: Washington Diplomat, Conservative MP, Justice Minister, and The Analysis (linked below). I do wish we’d head about this sort of thing sooner, such a breath of fresh air.

Some people just seem to be creative nexuses. No only do they themselves produce new creations as part of their existence in a seemingly effortless manner, they act as a center for others in a web of expression. The Dresden Dolls are such a pair.

Beyond their work as a “Punk Cabaret” band (coined by the Dolls so they weren’t labeled as “Goth”) they have inspired the The Brigade, done a sound track for the Company One production of A Clockwork Orange in Boston, worked with the ART on “The Onion Cellar” (a musical conceived by Palmer of the Dolls), sparked the traveling film festival Fuck the Back Row, and I’m sure a bunch of other stuff I don’t know about or have forgotten. Right now the group is on hiatus and Amanda Palmer and Brain Viglione are off pursuing their own projects. Palmer has been working on a solo album, played at the Spiegel Tent at Fringe Festival, recorded an album with Jason Webley and Evelyn Evelyn, and started a collaboration with Estradasphere.

The match up of Palmer and Estradasphere may be the best match up in the Dolls’ creative collaborations web since Amanda and Brian joined up as a duo. I witnessed the beginnings of their collaboration at Estradasphere’s home base in Seattle.

Enter the Seattle neighborhood of a Ballard and the 608 Club. I came into the experience knowing that it was going to wonderful and unique, because most anything Palmer participates in is. The 608 Club is the new home of Estradasphere, recently relocated from Santa Cruz, CA. By “home” I mean that many of the groups members live there. The space looks to be a converted theater with a living room, complete with light rigging and a balcony with connected bedroom with multipaned window. The entry room had an upright piano and two full sized Wurlitzer organs. There were no chairs and the audience was instructed to bring pillows if they didn’t want their asses to be aching by the end of the evening.

What followed was 3.5 hours of pure aesthetic, artistic, and acoustic joy. Estradasphere opened the evening with their eclectic mix of metal-charged Eastern European folk music, arrangements of video game theme songs, loungeish beats, and some song about walking though a field and seeing unicorns (I think). These guys blew me away. First, was the sheer breadth of their performance. Second, the pure musicianship of all of the members. They are excellent and fit together like vanish to a table. We’re not even to Amanda’s part yet.

Anything Palmer does is a performance. She doesn’t even play her keyboard straight. In her cabaret-esque getup, she made use of the whole space during her performance. Walking though the floor-seated audience, going through multiple costume changes. At one point she was in the bathroom adjacent to the living room In a bathtub of water, singing. We all watched her on a video projection. Coming out of the bathroom In robe, boxers, and hair in towel she singles out several male audience members and the lot proceeds upstairs. Hoots follow from the audience, of course. Why? Well, it’s a set up for “Coin Operated Boy” sung to accordion. Again, we all watched this projected on the living room wall as the action ensues upstairs. The concert ends with an encore as Estradasphere rolls out one of their uprights and we all sit around Amanda at the piano (allusions to Norman Rockwell were made).

Now, I really blew through the evening, but I’m finding the whole experience difficult to completely catch in words and “wow” or “damn!” just don’t cover it. What more can I say? I was impressed. Like all music/performance art it’s best viewed, not described. I took some photos and someone in the audience apparently had a video camera. For the textually inclined have a look at the Dolls’ forum or another review. Better yet, catch a live show! Get yourself on the Dresden Dolls and/or the Estradasphere mailing lists where I’m sure they will announce their tour. It will be worth your while to catch this act. Class, style, and rocking all the way.

You might remember my friend who was accused of running through a stop sign. He had words with an officer that initially didn’t seem like general, all around dick. Then you might also remember the hearing last February where the officer never said he saw us not stop at the sign and the district magistrate sided with him instead of the two citizens who said the cop was wrong. My friend appealed that farce of a decision and we had our day in Lancaster County Court on August 21, 2007. The result of the hearing had added to my fear that the tendency to prosecute the accused as much as possible in this country is steadily increasing.

My friend and I came into the trial with a common general outlook, hopeful but not too optimistic. My wish was that the cop didn’t show and this would all be done with since a dismissal was more likely. This was not the case and our “public servant” showed up in full colors. Since I had to leave that afternoon to return to Washington we requested to be put early in the schedule.

Our request was fulfilled. On entering the court room our lawyer turned around and commented that we should “be very polite to this judge.” I didn’t appreciate why she said that until after the trial was over. The officer was the first to give his statement with questions being asked by an assistant DA. This is where things started to look up. The officer clearly stated in his testimony that when he came to the intersection he saw us stop at the stop sign. The reason he pulled us over, he said, was for almost colliding with his vehicle (I forget the actually law we could have violated in that version of the story). After this statement our lawyer looked over her shoulder to me (I was in the audience) and give a quick wink. This was the seal for the case, the rest was going to be double checking and formality. The officer continued with his version of the argument between him and my friend concluding with that he threatened to hold charge us with disorderly conduct if we continued to argue with him. Actually, his exact words were “leave now or the cuffs come on.”

Now it was our turn to question. Our lawyer confirmed the charge on the citation, failing to stop at the stop sign. She also checked that he actually did see us stop. My friend had taken photos of the intersection that she used to establish the scene. Everything seemed to be going fine. As we got into my testimony as a witness and my friend’s it was clear that this hearing, like the other, was two opinions/memories against one. We held hard to the fact that the officer was not in the intersection at all when we started to make our left turn. My friend even went to the point of stating on the record that the officer was lying.

It was my impression that closing statements were standard in a hearing of this nature. Both parties made one in the initial hearing with the district magistrate back in February. It was pretty obvious what our lawyer was going to say, the citation says X and the officer just stated Y and they don’t match up. She might have brought up reasonable doubt as well. But, nobody got a chance to say anything. After the cross examination of my friend was complete and the re-direct option was waved, the judge just handed down his decision based on credibility and sided with the officer. As the sentencing was passed my friend looked around the room at some of the courtroom staff and there was a clear look of amazement on their face.

We were all floored by the decision. Our lawyer apologized, but really she did the best that she could. Since she had another case that morning she stuck around and listened in on some of the other cases. All of the ones she viewed ended in guilty decisions. The presiding judge is a hard ass, everybody is guilty of something. She was of the opinion that with any other judge in the court we would have faired much better.

All this time and resource spend on one officer that was pissed that we almost hit him and how biased the courts were toward the police started to get me steamed. I would ask myself how they handled more serious infractions. All my friend was going to get was a fine and some points on his license, not that big of a deal in the broader picture. What if there was real money (not $40), jail time, or a felony charge in the cards? Do they fuck that up as well?

There have been a several events the last few years that have caught my attention. After 9/11 many of the mail and biohazard laws switched around. In 1993, Thomas C. Butler, MD found some plague samples missing and reported this to the Texas Tech University safety folks. The Feds soon get involved and soon he is charged with a whole raft of very, very serious charges including bioterrorism. Many of the other charges involved violating federal transportation and shipping rules for biohazards materials. Adding in some fraud and money being moved around in questionable fashions, the Feds found 69 things to charge him with. In December of 2003 he was found guilty on 47 of those counts. In the end he was given was cleared of the most serious charges, but still spend 2 years in prison and had to pay about $54,000 in fines and restitution. You do have to wonder though if it was worth it, destroying the life of a well respected scientist and physician over a mistake that less than 10 years ago would have not made new outside of the university safety office. The New York Times has some good write-ups on the whole travesty.

In a related case the performance artist and Buffalo University art professor Steve Kurtz is being charged with mail fraud. In May 2004 he awoke to find that his wife had stopped breathing. Like any American with telephone he called 911. EMTs and police arrived to see that Kurtz was preparing for an art exhibit at MassMoCA highlighting the identification of genetically modified produce. He had the basic biological laboratory equipment that you would need to grow bacterial cell cultures and extract DNA along with some harmless bacteria that he had obtained from a friend at the University of Pittsburgh. This triggered the FBI coming in, the block around his house being cordoned off (full Hazmat treatment), him being detained for 22 hours, and many of his processions being impounded (all of the equipment for the exhibit, a book he was working on etc.) along with his wife’s body. In the end the New York State Department of Health confirmed the bacteria was harmless. Kurtz had also made similar exhibits at other art museums with no incident. In the end the terrorism charges were dropped. But, the Department of Justice has found issue with how he obtained the bacteria. It appears that the friend he obtained the bacteria from violated the material transfer agreement with the source company. This could be interpreted as mail fraud, but by the Justice Department prosecution guide lines this type of case would not normally be pressed. The CAE Defense fund has a very good (but still slanted) analysis of the post-insident prosecution. Pre-911 Kurtz might have faced a felony charge and a maximum of 5 years in prison. Thought I wonder if it would have gone that far. After the Patriot Act changed the penalty for mail fraud he could face up to 25 years.

The list continues. Michael Righi was arrested in Brooklyn, Ohio when he refused to let a clerk check his bag and further refused to how his ID to the local police officer that was called in. He detailed the full event on his blog. Finally his recorded was cleared with come compromise on his part after spending around $8,000 spent in legal fees. A 70 year old women was arrested in Utah for not giving her name to an officer when he was giving her a ticket for not watering her lawn, a violation of a local zoning ordinance. During the arrest she struggled and injured her nose. And yes, by “arrest” I mean cuffed, booked, and detained (i.e. jailed). Did I mention she was 70? Charges are not being pressed. More personally I know another fellow who was pulled over by the police for drunk driving. After testing negative in 5 breathalyzer tests and the cops refusal to preform a more accurate blood test, they released him, only to press charges of reckless driving because he didn’t use his signal when changing lanes to let the offices pass (when they actually wanted to pull him over). It is cheaper for him to plead guilty than to fight the charge.

Let’s not forget the outspoken student Andrew Meyer at John Kerry’s last University of Florida town hall meeting. Meyer went over his time limit and was asked to leave the microphone. He did not comply and ended up being forced down and arrested when he resisted the police after he finished up and walked away from the mic. Events escalated to the polices needing to use A Taser to subdue him. There is some debate as to whether Mr. Meyer is a victim of police violence or an opportunistic prankster. In this age of camera phones you can find live footage of this insident and other people, being subdued by law enforcement offices with Tasers, (at UCLA for example).

I’ve just listed the examples that I have come across in my reading. In our current information-driven culture newsevents spreads much more quickly than any other time in human history. At the same time you have freer expression of opinion at many levels of reporting quality. That said, the end consumer needs to be even more mindful of the source of their information. For myself I do not know for a fact if the various law enforcement a justice institutions in our country are “out to get” more people than they were in the past. But, it you look in the news and look at the increases in rates of incarceration over last two decades and you hear more cases where the government is clearly trying to get somebody for anything they can find (even if it is not related to the original charge), you really do have to wonder if our society’s dedication to the Rule of Law has been perverted over the last 20-30 years.

I don’t purport to have a full view of this trend. But, I do know that as an aware member of our society I have been hearing more about more incidents and there is more discussion about this topic than there was 10 years ago. It is encouraging that people can still hold discourse on things that concern them. As Americans this is our right. But, should be be forced in to obedience by fear of unknown accusations by the State? Are the cases people I listed above really of danger to the over all welfare of our society? I don’t think there is a conspiracy here, but I do seriously wonder if the State has gotten away from the people it is supposed to serve. We as a nation could be suffering from mission creep. Keep your eyes open and me might make it out of this.