Toaster the Psychic Organ Builder

So the other day I was standing inside of a 4-story pneumatic pipe organ while it was being played thinking to myself: "Holy crap I'm inside of a 4-story pneumatic pipe organ while it is being played!" when it occurred to me that maybe I might actually know something. For a while I've been feeling like I have spent so much time and effort learning about molecular biology that I no longer know anything actually useful outside of the laboratory. This feeling was jade creeping into the awesomeness of science, and I found it best to promptly shake it off like a dog after a bath and go roll around on the floor joyously with all my legs in the air. I mean, sure this science sometimes appears to be nothing more than moving tiny amounts of expensive liquids around while muttering vague incantations about hypotheses and replicability. But what it is, what molecular biology fundamental is, is me dissecting LIFE ITSELF with my MIND!!! I could have all the fancy tools an R01 can buy at my disposal and a hammock above my bench, but those things wouldn't mean crap for meaningful, insightful science if I didn't start by designing an elegant, productive experiment. It's like I'm telekinetic at the molecular level, because I have to imagine the true nature of all these stochastically interacting proteins, genetic elements, or other molecules and their aggregate behavior clearly, I have to fix it in my mind and strip away the limitations of my vision to harness the quiet power of chemical reactions and hydrogen dipoles to prove the accuracy or folly of what I have captured with my mind.

Sure, this science doesn't have the immediate satisfaction of swinging a hammer and building a chair, the delay to sate the fundamental human need to create and explore burns on a longer fuse, but oh, when it connects it is all the more beautiful. I may not be building a pipe organ, but I am reverse-engineering something many more times intricate when I can't even see it with my naked eyes. That. Is. Awesome.

On Animal Research

The recent venal response to Dr. Isis' very reasonable worry regarding animal-rights activists posing as university inspectors to gain access to her lab and wreak harm upon herself, her employees, her research, or her livelihood. In response, implied threats against her family were made.

Let's be clear: Toaster supports animal research. I do not support inhumane treatment of animals or unnecessary cruelty, but I will defend the necessity of animal research whenever it called into doubt. I do not undertake animal research lightly, and I seek to treat the rodents I use as humanely as possible. Some persistently argue that animal research is inherently inhumane and cruel, but I find that it is far more cruel to perpetuate human suffering that may be preventable due to animal research by sitting back and doing nothing.

Nonetheless, the recent debate got me wondering how far I would be willing to go to further research that alleviates human suffering. Adult humans aside, I suspect that if taking on a silverback gorilla armed with nothing more than a 22-blade scalpel was guaranteed to save a stranger's child, I would do so. And if that child were family, I'd forfeit the scalpel for a potato.

Necropsy Practice

This is a rather smelly organ. I managed to puncture one today while practicing necropsies on mice and it oozed out of the too-deep cut I'd made into the peritoneum, sloshed down the side of the mouse and pooled in the Petri dish beneath. I've observed dissections of pathogen infected mice, and it seems that Vibrio cholerae kind of turns it into a watery, even fouler-smelling mush.

Enjoy your dinner.