Open Reading Frame

Dammit, I'm late with this, but you still have a day to help Creative Commons meet their year-end fundraising goal. If you don't know what CC is, you should. Seriously, you should. They are important for anyone who has any interest in any kind of art or creative endeavour (including science -- PLoS Biology, the flagship Open Access journal, is published under a CC licence). Briefly:

Creative Commons is a new system, built within current copyright law, that allows you to share your creations with others and use music, movies, images, and text online that's been marked with a Creative Commons license. If you're looking for more in-depth information, our About section contains more about the history, concepts and people behind the organization. To see the Creative Commons in action, try out our Find, Create, and Share sections, or one of the sections devoted to Audio, Video, Images, Text, and Education.

There is also, of course, a FAQ. Right now, CC needs less than $10K to meet their fundraising goal. They need to raise $225K from public donations by the end of the year in order to secure their public charity status and retain foundation funding; Lessig explains, and talks about what they plan to do with the money, here. If you can, please help out.

Update: target met. The need for donations is not so critical now, but it's not going away, so please consider supporting Creative Commons when you're deciding where to spend your philanthropy budget.

He's also so very, very right.

...here's the bad news: We have three more ungodly and humiliating and colon-curdling years of BushCo. We have three more years of some of the most miserable foreign and environmental and human-rights policy you will see in your lifetime.

We have three more years of brutal unforgivable war and misprision and of the religious right trying to cram its splintered stick of wicked self-righteousness straight up the country's yamdinger, and if I'm here to tell you anything at all I am here to tell you this: Your energy is needed. Right now.

Energy of transformation. Energy of possibility. Energy of intellect and clarity and progress and joy and sex and kiss, of change and growth and defiance. Oh I know, it sounds all swoony and big-brushed and impossibly affected. It might sound all froufrou and New Agey and San Francisco. You know what? Who cares.

(And I'd already decided what to call my resolutions post, so there.)

Find out why here. To paraphrase Bill Cosby: those of you with or without theses, you'll understand.

A while back, I signed up for a poem a week by email from Poetry International Web; it's "Poem of the Week" in my Bloglines account. This week's poem was by Gieve Patel, and was interesting enough that I went and read a few more. I was really taken with this one:

IT MAKES

It makes sense not
to have the body
seamless,
hermetically sealed, a
non-orificial
box of incorruptibles.
Better shot through and through!
Interpenetrated
– with the world. Air
mists my lymph. Ex
cretion, degrading
routine,
gives the world passage.
I am a bead.
Sorted,
thumbed,
threaded,
strung,
fingered (did you say) by
threads of all hues,
riddled through,
happily.

Welcome to the world, Elijah Boyd. Live long, and prosper.

[This entry will stay on top until 051225.]

I've been something of a Scrooge about Christmas for a long time -- I'm not Christian and rampant materialism squicks me (yeah yeah, why'd I move to America?--It's not all McDonalds and reality TV over here, you know), so there's not much left but family time, and I don't need Hallmark to tell me how or when to enjoy that. Also, I like giving people presents but I've never really liked getting them -- it always makes me feel weird in a way I can't explain -- so I've pretty much weaned everyone I know off the whole Christmas deal, apart from a few comforting family rituals with my Mum and Dad. Bah humbug, you know?

Have you ever noticed how it's usually people who have plenty of stuff who feel this way? At least, I guess, I have some sense of 'enough'. The spousal unit, though, knows from hardship in a way most Westerners only guess at. (You think you're tough? You ain't tough.) Which makes it a minor miracle of human potential when Cat looks at our cozy middle class lifestyle and says "That's plenty, let's give the extra away". (You think you're cool? You ain't cool.)

All of which is by way of introducing Cat's Christmas message this year. I can't put it better so I'm just gonna steal it:

Dear Everybody Who Buys Stuff For Us:

We know we're hard to buy for. We know we don't help you much with this. We're not into "stuff", and we have everything we need.

One thing we do love is our city, Portland, Oregon. We're committed to making it a better place, and support local charities that help people who aren't as fortunate as we are. This Christmas, we'd like to be a little selfish and ask you to support our local charities, too.

See, I haven't always been where I am today. I grew up on government cheese and second-hand clothes. I've accepted the holiday turkey from the food bank with gratitude. I've hoarded canned food during good times, to get through the lean times. But here I am, happily married, a home of my own, living in plenty. I made it, and others can, too. They just need a little help. How 'bout it?

If you're on board, please check out our givelist at What Goes Around.org. It's an easy way to give to one of our three favorite charitable organizations, Sisters of the Road Cafe, Central City Concern, and the Oregon Food Bank.

Thanks, and have a wonderful holiday.

Cat and Bill

What we both want, far more than anything more for ourselves, is for everyone to have what they need. So if you were thinking of buying me something, that's what I'd like.

Digby is skint, and Jeanne's computer died. Both have been blogging for about three years, and both are mainstays of the progressive blogosphere. The online world would be a much poorer place without either of these two lively, insightful, important voices.

I know things get tight at this time of year, but if you have any spare scratch at all, please consider dropping some on Digby (PayPal button at top left or snail mail to the address in this post) and Jeanne (tip jar, or if you can't/won't pay online email me and we'll work something out).

Bloody hell. I waited a few weeks to upgrade to Firefox 1.5 (MacOSX), because I know from bitter experience that every single time the bloody thing is upgraded, something breaks. I figure the early adopters run interference for me. Well, it appears I have to wait even longer -- it took about five minutes after upgrading for me to run in to Bug 298502, which is where you get the Beachball of Death and have to force-quit the second (but not the first) time you try to use a drop-down from the bookmarks toolbar. It seems to have been around since June, so that must have been on 1.0.x builds, but I'm back on 1.0.7 now and it's not happening. Gaaaah.

Alistair Cooke is sorely missed since his death last year, and never more so than now, as the story breaks that his corpse was defiled:

The bones of Alistair Cooke, one of the great broadcasters of the twentieth century, were stolen days after he died last year at the age of 95, according to reports in New York.

Cooke's bones were removed by a surgeon and then sold for around $7,000 (GBP4,000) to two companies that provide tissue for transplant operations, said The Daily News.

I don't know what Cooke's beliefs were, but I do know that he had his family break the law by scattering his ashes in Central Park -- so I rather think he'd have been amused by all this, and I wish he could somehow be here to send in one of his wry Letters From America about it. (I don't mean to say it's funny -- it's ghoulish and astonishing and vile, of course -- but I can almost hear him making droll humour from the horror, and all in that lovely voice.)

Sweet. Maybe I'm not too damn old after all. This National Center for Policy Analysis report stands in sharp contrast to (what seems to me) the constant flood of articles reminding me that Einstein was only 26 when he set physics on its collective ear, Gauss was 24 when he did much the same to mathematics, and so on. And on and on and bloody on. However:

The author analyzed data on Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, and Economics over the past 100 years and on outstanding technological innovations over the same period. He finds that:
There is large variation in age -- 42 percent of innovations came about when their creators were in their 30s, while 40 percent occurred when the inventors were in their 40s, and 13 percent appeared when the inventors were over 50.

In contrast, there were no great achievements produced by innovators before the age of 19 and only 7 percent were produced by innovators younger than 27.

Controlling for nationality and field of study, the average age of a great innovator increased eight years over the past century.
Looking closer at the data, the author finds that:
The upward trend for productive innovators is a result of a substantial decline in the innovative output of younger individuals.

There appears to be no relative increase in innovation potential of those beyond middle age.
The article suggests that the average age is increasing, because the amount of knowledge has increased. Since thinkers must increasingly invest in acquiring intellectual capital and the accumulation of knowledge, the average age of innovation increases as well.

Any study which undermines the idea that "if you haven't thunk it by the time you're 30 you're not going to" is a friend of mine.

Update: Rob Carlson points to this article, which is short and well worth your time if you work with your brain. I don't think I agree with Rob that the article "take(s) seriously the myth that mathematicians and physicists do all their best work before the age of 40" -- in fact, I think the author, Ed Tenner, takes rather the opposite position. He does point out that many late-life intellectual achievers switched fields, moving away from the risk of stagnating among the ideas that brought them early prominence. This idea has about as much currency as the "dead by 40" one, but has a much more obvious mechanism behind it: one will always be tempted to cling to tools that have worked well, and success breeds paperwork. In any case, Rob is my pal: "most of the experimental scientists and engineers I know, including the majority of biologists I've run into, just get better with age." Damn straight!

Dear Mr Edward:

as a molecular biologist and an art lover, I am always pleased to see science informing art, and art informing the public about science. Your online exhibit, "Irradiance", is a wonderful example which brings the beauty and mystery of life on the smallest scales to a great many people who might otherwise never notice it. I am able to communicate something of the way I feel about my work by simply pointing to your art -- for which my thanks.

In light of the power of such art to shape public attitudes toward science, I write to ask you to consider a small change to the introductory text of your exhibit. You have included an explanatory paragraph regarding X-ray crystallography and a somewhat oblique reference to the infamous treatment of Franklin by Wilkins et al., so you are obviously familiar with Franklin's indispensable contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA. It is somewhat surprising to me, then, that Franklin's name appears only in the titles of two of the "further reading" references you provide.

I think it likely, if unfortunate, that few people who see "Irradiance" will read the references. That being so, you miss an opportunity to put Franklin's name where it belongs: right alongside Watson and Crick in the public perception. I wonder if you would consider adjusting a sentence in your opening paragraph so as to include Rosalind Franklin's name? I believe that for you to do this would go some considerable way towards redressing that fifty-year-old injustice.

Sincerely,

Bill Hooker.

P.S. I should have pointed out -- I did notice that the text accompanying "Spiral II" includes a clear and concise explanation of Franklin's role. What I am suggesting is that her name also be visible on the very first page, to promote a sort of "brand recognition" if you will. --B.

Note the new category. Via Waxy's links: fucking Nintendo (who make worthless games) has threatened to sue researchers at Sloan-Kettering (who are trying to cure cancer) to get them not to nickname a gene "pokemon":

Researchers at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York have changed the name of a gene found to cause cancer, due to legal pressure from Nintendo's Pokémon USA. The gene, which has the formal name of POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic gene, was previously abbreviated as POKEMON, leading to media reports that compared the game with aspects of the disease, albeit in a lighthearted fashion.

Scientific journal Nature reported that Pokémon USA, the subsidiary company of Nintendo established to control the Pokémon brand in America, threatened to sue the cancer research center on the understandable [senn: wtf?] grounds that equating Pokémon with cancer was doing harm to the brand's image. Sloan-Kettering acquiesced to the company's demands and changed the gene's name to the more unobtrusive Zbtb7.

(Actually, the gene was initially called FBI-1, which would make the protein name FBI-1; the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee entry is here. In rodents, the gene was initally called LRF/OCZF. HUGO doesn't list nomenclature history (or I am missing it), but the rat and mouse genome databases show that the gene has been officially called Zbtb7 since 2004 (rat in September, mouse in January). There are papers as late as 2004 calling the human gene FBI-1 and LRF, which doesn't tell you what the "official" HUGO symbol was at that time -- which in turn tells you that gene nomenclature is a bit of a mess. ANYway.)

The abstract for the paper calling the protein POKEMON is here; it's a member of the POK family of DNA-binding transcriptional repressors, and it directly downregulates p19/ARF, a key protein in the tumor suppressive p53 pathway. If that's all blah and no Ginger, take my word for it: this is an important gene in cancer biology. It's going to be much studied and much discussed, and I hope that it's continually referred to as "ZBTB7A, known as POKEMON until those greedy whiny assholes at Nintendo sued because they have no sense of humour and an unhealthy fondness for their precious "brand", which they claimed was being somehow harmed".

I mean, sheeeeit, Sega has no problem with the gene called sonic hedgehog (the mutant causes spiky denticles in Drosophila; the first two hedgehog genes, indian hedgehog and desert hedgehog, were named after real animals; the third to be discovered, in 1993, was named after the video game character).

From Headpiece Filled With Straw:

I Contain Multitudes
And some of these fuckers
Have got to go.

I detest Whitman's drivel, but it does make a good target.

When I named this site, I intended to write a lot more pieces like this, or at least as close to it as I could get.

Brava!

The editors of the American Journal of Bioethics have a weblog, as anyone who has looked through my blogroll will know. Pace Mark Kleiman¹, bioethics is a vital field in all senses of the word. I take issue, however, with a recent comment by regular guest bloggers David Magnus and Arthur Kaplan -- a comment made not on the blog but in a newspaper column, and reprinted on the blog. If you haven't been following the Korean stem cell fiasco, this is an excellent primer.

Sirs --

in a recent opinion piece to which you linked in your blog, your colleagues David Magnus and Arthur Kaplan make the following comment:
When trust breaks down, the very possibility of science is threatened. That is why so much time is spent these days emphasizing to young scientists the importance of integrity.
I want to ask: emphasized by whom? Where? At no institute or school in which I have worked or studied (six, in two different countries) has ethics been more than an afterthought, a five-minute intranet "test" tacked on to requirements to satisfy the pesterers on the IRB. I have had mentors of great personal integrity, from whom I have learned, I hope, to conduct my own research in a manner deserving of the trust Magnus and Kaplan speak of; but I have also seen PIs work drunk and skirt the edges of data fabrication on a more or less routine basis. Martinson et al. held no surprises for me, as I am sure it did not for you or for Magnus and Kaplan. Science is just as "high-pressure, high-stakes and highly competitive" elsewhere as it is in Korea, and we can expect more scandals unless, as Magnus and Kaplan themselves put it, "training in ethical standards [is] seen as central to the enterprise of science, rather than burdensome make-work." To do this will indeed entail spending a great deal of time emphasizing to young scientists the importance of integrity. I would rather that high-profile ethicists such as Magnus and Kaplan not give the impression that this work is underway when, in my experience, it has barely begun across much of the scientific community.

----
¹ The comments on bioethics in this entry were uninformed, ill-mannered and, it must be added, uncharacteristic. Despite being called on it by hilzoy, I have yet to see Mr Kleiman attempt to justify his hostility. I got a server error trying to ping his entry, so I've emailed him.

Yahoo's gone and bought del.icio.us, just as I'd really got the hang of using tags. I hate Yahoo, first because they pollute everything with advertising, and second, because they are soulless corporate worldfuckers who would shank their grandmothers if there was a dime in it:

The text of the verdict in the case of journalist Shi Tao - sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for “divulging state secrets abroad” - shows that Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. provided China’s state security authorities with details that helped to identify and convict him, Reporters Without Borders said today.

“We already knew that Yahoo collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well,” the press freedom organisation said.

“Yahoo obviously complied with requests from the Chinese authorities to furnish information regarding an IP address that linked Shi Tao to materials posted online, and the company will yet again simply state that they just conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate,” the organisation said. “But does the fact that this corporation operates under Chinese law free it from all ethical considerations? How far will it go to please Beijing?”

Better technical background with less drama can be found here. So yeah, bastards. And now they own my favourite bookmark organizer, so I've deleted my account and gone looking for a replacement. Right now I'm using furl (my links are here), which is clunkier but has pretty much the same functionality. Off the top of my head:

the google ads piss me off ~~but they only show up on the public view~~ spoke too soon, they're all over my view as well. That's a dealbreaker as soon as I find an ad-free alternative.
calling tags "topics" is stupid
not allowing me to edit the default tags would be a dealbreaker if there were anywhere else to go
searching by multiple tags doesn't seem to be available, which is just nuts, so maybe I'm missing it -- if I'm supposed to use the search syntax, bite me
tagging posts from a drop-down list is another reason to keep looking
the privacy policy is crap and there's a lousy feedback form instead of a development forum/blog
there are import and export functions but I haven't checked to see whether they work with, say, spurl, which I've been using as a backup for del.icio.us (autoloading of furl links, as spurl does for del.icio.us, would be nice)
There should be a way to hack the one-click button to post to whichever tag/s I want, but I can't figure it out (if html is a dialect of Martian, then fucking javascript is an obscure dialect of Ancient Martian)

I came up with about twenty different sites/applications while I was looking; for future reference and in case they're of use to readers, here they are:

http://protopage.com/v2
https://www.foldershare.com/
http://www.farfetch.com/
http://www.netvouz.com/
http://www.blinklist.com/
http://www.backpackit.com/
http://base.google.com/base/default
http://www.bitfolge.de/snif-en.html
http://www.linkroll.com/index.php
http://unalog.com/about/
http://toolbar.a9.com/
http://www.hyperlinkomatic.com/index.html
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/booksync
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Bookmarks&numpg=10&id=14
http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Link_Management/
http://www.sync2it.com/
http://de.lirio.us/rubric
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/
http://www.mybookmarks.com/
http://www.myhq.com/

If you're reading this you should already be reading 3 Quarks Daily on a regular basis. If you're not, do yourself a favour and start. Whether you've been reading or not, Abbas has a request that I'd also like you to consider:

There is a very vivacious and intelligent young woman (she is 22) that my wife and I are friends with. She moved to New York City from a small town in the south to pursue her ambition to be a painter and illustrator. She had exhibited prodigious artistic talent from an early age, and after finding a job as a waitress and an apartment in the city, had no trouble gaining admission to an art program in a New York City college by showing her portfolio. She has been going to school full-time, and also working as a waitress full-time, and she has done tremendously well in school. [...]

The last time my wife and I saw her, she was in tears because she had just received a letter from her college saying that her financial aid is being cut off because she made $1,000 too much in income to qualify. Now, it turns out that it would have been better for her all around if she had sat on her ass and collected welfare the whole year, since she would then be eligible for aid. As it is, she reported her income absolutely honestly, and now she cannot afford to attend school in the spring. She is from a modest family and they cannot help her.

I asked her how much her tuition is, and she cutely told me a rather exact amount: $1,533.85 (I have a good memory for numbers). I decided I would try to help her, but cannot do this by myself. My wife Margit and I have made a contribution of $200 to a fund to help her continue with college in spring. I ask you to give what you can to make up the difference.

A student working their way through higher education is a cause very near to my heart, not least because my parents generously funded, by gift and loan, my entire schooling. I had it easy, and since one cannot pay back generosity or family support in the way one repays a loan, I feel obliged to "pay it forward". On top of that, the student in question is being penalized for honesty -- oy. It's a situation tailor-made to get me to put my hand in my pocket, and I hope it will jar a few bucks loose from your Christmas stashes as well, O my tens of readers.

As Abbas points out, he has enough readers that $5, or $1, or whatever you can spare, will be plenty. Small donations add up fast on the web; that's one of its greatest strengths.

At the time of writing, the appeal was up to $540. Just five bucks per from another 200 readers and an honest and deserving student can stay in school. Be a mensch.

Update: Amount collected as of 12/13/05: $1,115. Nearly there!

Update:Amount collected as of 12/18/05: $1,412.85 So close!

Update:Target met as of 051219. If you contributed, the student in question has thanked you very prettily here, and some of her latest work can be seen in the same post. Well done all, especially Abbas.

Buried toward the end of this story about "the first real, honest-to-God, horny-making, body-shaking, equal-opportunity aphrodisiac", PT-141, is a little piece of behavioural research that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else:

When Jim Pfaus tested PT-141 on his female rats, he based his experimental design partly on the work of Raul Paredes, a fellow rat sexologist testing the effects of something more elusive: personal autonomy. That’s a tricky thing to measure, but it can be done. Paredes did it like this: First, he looked at rat couples living in standard, box-shaped cages and recorded the details of their sexual behavior. Then, he altered the cages in only one particular: He divided them into two chambers with a clear wall broken only by one opening, too small for the males to get through but just right for the females. Architecturally it was a minor change, but what it did for the females was huge. It let them get away from the males whenever they chose to, and thereby made it entirely their choice whether to have sex. Paredes then observed the rats’ behavior in this altered setting. Here’s what he found: The effects of giving a female rat greater personal control over her sex life are essentially the same as those of giving her PT-141. Autonomy, in other words, is as real an aphrodisiac as any substance known to science.

The thing about PT-141 that's generating all the buzz is that, wonder of wonders, it makes women want to get busy. It's the first genuinely effective female aphrodisiac drug. Now, that's a wonderful thing and I'm not trying to say otherwise. All I am pointing out is that maybe it would also be a wonderful thing if we, as a society, were to explore the idea of personal autonomy as female aphrodisiac.

It was worth adding delicious/poetry to my rss feeds just to be reminded of Piet Hein's Grooks. Picture swiped from here, where you can read a good brief biography.

ARS BREVIS

There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-
lessness.

WHO IS LEARNED?
A definition

One who, consuming midnight oil
in studies diligent and slow,
teaches himself, with painful toil,
the things that other people know.

THE ROAD TO WISDOM

The road to wisdom? -- Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
           Err
           and err
           and err again
           but less
           and less
           and less.

HINT AND SUGGESTION
Admonitory grook addressed to youth.

The human spirit sublimates
the impulses it thwarts;
a healthy sex life mitigates
the lust for other sports.

ATOMYRIADES

Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards
of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards.

I really like Matthew Baldwin's site Tricks of the Trade, which is a repository for tips and hints that most of us would never think of, but that people in specific professions have come across. For instance, not long ago there was a tip about cat's whiskers and thin sectioning which I will be passing on to my colleagues at work (just as soon as I collect up a few of KC's whiskers).

I have to say, though, that the latest trick is just plain bad advice:

If there is a job announcement for a position you'd really like, but it's in another city, arrange your travel schedule so you "just happen to be in the neighborhood" prior to the application deadline. Set up an appointment to visit the department and pretend you don't know about the job opening.

Try your best, during the course of conversation, to get the department chair or someone influential to tell you about the new position and they'll probably suggest that you apply for it. Sound really interested, ask them what they're looking for, and make it seem that you never would have applied for the job if this person hadn't made this request of you.

For the price of an airline ticket, you've gone from "just a name" on an application to a familiar face that was personable and open to suggestions from faculty members. Also, the colleague who suggested the job to you will feel somewhat responsible to be sure your application gets considered attention.

It's a good thing for Barbara, who submitted this, that Matthew doesn't publish contact info or last names. This is advice to lie, plain and simple. It's worse than that: not only is it unethical advice, it's wrong and foolish. It's not at all common for strangers to "drop in" on a research department with whom they have no connection, even if the stranger in question is a scientist working in a similar field. It will trigger spidey-senses all over, and unless you're a much better actor than most people, the fact that you're visiting on false pretenses is going to be pretty obvious. Moreover, your chances of "dropping in" on "the department chair or someone influential" are approximately zero unless it's a fully-tenured position you're trying to sneak into. These are busy people. They probably won't suggest you apply for it, either, unless you've made it clear you're looking for a job -- in which case you've "blown your cover". Finally, suppose you do get the job -- you'll be working with people from whom you have to keep a secret, one about which you presumably, since you're the type to do this in the first place, feel pretty smug. How long before you screw yourself (don't think for a moment that faculty will forgive such a thing when your first tenure application comes around).

This may or may not be useful advice for other fields, but it's labelled "scientist" -- for which field it's frankly idiotic. If you want a job in science, just apply for it. If you're willing to pay for a plane ticket and put aside time to attend an interview, so much the better -- if you're at all an attractive candidate, that willingness will only push you further up the shortlist.

There's a thread over on Ask MetaFilter about idiosyncratic public restroom habits. As I knew they would, several public bathroom habits were identified as idiosyncratic which are in fact very sensible, and should be standard for everyone. I left a comment that I think is worth reproducing here (slightly edited for clarity):

Having worked in a number of hospitals, I've had the good fortune to be taught how to use a public restroom by a series of public health experts. That doesn't seem like something that you'd need to be taught, but for most people it is. Washing your hands properly (that is, the right way at the right time) is the single most effective thing you can do to protect your health and reduce infectious disease transmission rates.

The point about public restroom hygiene is not whether urine is sterile (it is, or should be), or whether you're breathing in teeny turdicles if you can smell someone else's leavings (you are). The point is that the restroom is a collecting node, a repository, a distribution center for "germs" -- bacteria, viruses, even dangerous protozoa, but most especially viruses (flu, rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, hepatitis A and more).

Here's the protocol I was taught:

1. Do your thing; cleaning of seats (and floors) is not entirely necessary, but it's a good idea to wipe up visible liquid. If the seat is dry, seat covers are reasonable insulation against whatever invisibles are still there. Likewise washing your hands first won't hurt, but isn't necessary unless you have something dire on them.

2. Wash your hands. Wash them properly -- most of you think you do this, and most of you don't. Use soap and water; do not use antibacterial anything; take at least as long to wash your hands as it takes you to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in your head (or out loud, if you like). Use enough soap to get a good thick lather going. Wash the backs of your hands, wash between your fingers, do each finger individually, go up your wrist at least as far as where a watch sits, scrabble your fingertips in your palms to get under fingernails.

3. Rinse thoroughly -- use all the same motions.

4. Dry your hands. If there's a tap rather than an infrared sensor, elbow tap or foot pedal (preferred options all), then turn it on before you start washing and use a paper towel to turn it off. You'll probably want to use your second paper towel, since they're pretty flimsy and the first will probably be pretty well saturated (unless you frequent a better class of bog than I do). The object is not to touch any bathroom surface with your clean hands. All of those surfaces are trying to kill you. Use the paper towel to open the door, too.

Following this simple protocol is, seriously, the most important and effective thing you can do to improve public (and your) health. If everyone does this, infectious disease transmission rates will plummet. Don't just take my word for it:

The most important thing that you can do to keep from getting sick is to wash your hands. -- CDC's Natl Center for Infectious Diseases

Posters, videos, etc from the Natl Food Service Management Inst

Hand washing is the single most effective way to prevent the spread of infections. -- Canadian Center for Occ Health and Safety

washup.org, from the Am Soc Microbiol

December 2005 Archive