Derek Lowe: “The anti [animal] testing people seem to have visions of drug company employees cackling at the thought of getting to use more animals, when the truth is that we’d dump them in a minute if we could. But here’s the hard part: we can’t. Not for now, and not for some time to come. We don’t know enough biology to do it. As it stands, if you were able to model every relevant system in a rat, well enough to use your model for predictive screening, you’d have basically built a rat yourself. We get surprised all the time when our compounds go into animals, and every time it happens, it shows how little we really know.”

Even in left-wing Berkeley, people can’t imagine how huge an issue animal testing is in England. I’ve met scientists who have had serious death threats because of their involvement in Alzheimer’s research, with animals involved in the testing. Britain has the strictest regulations on the planet in this regard, but that hasn’t stilled the sometimes-violent protests. That’s part of what makes the creation of Pro-Test by teenager Laurie Pycroft so remarkable and courageous.

My seven-year old son knocked on the bathroom door this morning while I was shaving. His mother had sent him up to show me the shocking headline on the front page of The San Francisco Chronicle: Cody’s Flagship Closing Down. Contrary to expectations, I didn’t slit my throat with my razor. But I was saddened.
One of the great joys of Berkeley is its healthy supply of good, independent booksellers. Cody’s stands at the top of the tree and, as my wife said this morning, “I thought that’s why we moved here.” Fortunately, the loss of one Cody’s doesn’t mean the loss of Cody’s. Their Fourth Street branch is very close to my office and has received the bulk of my (considerable) book-buying custom. And my experience is apparently typical. Cody’s flagship branch of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley has lost the trade of the comfortable professional classes in Berkeley: too grotty, too hard to park.

There’s another issue at play, which has wider implications than the parochial concerns of Berkeleyites. I’ve started reading Daniel Gilbert’s absolutely wonderful Stumbling on Happiness (Tyler Cowen: “He takes Proust and turns it into social science.”). After raving about it, one of my colleagues stopped in Cody’s (Fourth Street) on the way home. “We don’t have it yet,” a bookseller said. When my colleague said he knew it was out, they lamented that they get books as much as five days later than Barnes & Noble or Borders. That’s what a big chain and clout with the distributors does. And that in turn makes it much harder for an independent like Cody’s to fight the giants and Amazon.com, particularly in a clued-in market like Berkeley.

That kind of story re-energizes my determination to continue to patronize local independent booksellers. Even if I sometimes have to wait five days. (And it makes me wonder why I include links to Amazon.com here rather than something else. Need to think about that.)

Update Without prior consultation, my wife wrote more eloquently about the same news.

Michael Bérubé: “On Monday I find that the only people still talking about Hookergate are… bloggers. Really smart, reliable ones like Laura Rozen and Kevin Drum, mind you, not those foul-mouthed denizens of the fever swamp (i.e., everybody else, including you). Well, at least this reminds me why I started reading blogs in the first place, back in the summer of 2002 – out of a growing sense that almost everything else had become worse than useless.”

Warner Bros deal with BitTorrent: “It’s much easier to win an online marketplace than to win back an online marketplace that’s lost.”

Foreign Policy provides a handy, cut-out-and-keep list of the five top global choke points: Strait of Hormuz, Abqaiq Oil Processing Facility, Strait of Malacca, Suez Canal, Druzhba Pipeline.

In the high court battle between the comparatively youthful digital Apple and the doddering analogue Apple, Mr Justice Mann arrived at the right result today.

The odd case of Erik Ringmar, a tenured lecturer in government at the London School of Economics, shows that even in liberal societies there are plenty of forces ranged against free speech.

Ringmar gave a talk to students considering attending LSE where he was funny and honest:

Many employers don’t actually trust the university to convey the kind of information they approve of and prefer instead to teach their staff themselves. Often of course this makes a lot of sense. What you need to know as an employee in a company is to a large extent practical, hands-on, stuff which universities can’t teach you. Not even the LSE. What this means is that much of what you learn at the university is pretty useless in career terms.

He also noted that students might not have much interaction with senior faculty: “[The importance of their own research] means that the first-class teachers usually will have their minds elsewhere than on undergraduate teaching. They might be away on conferences, and even if they are not absent in body, they may be absent in mind.” My reading of his talk was that it was an excellent, frank appraisal that painted the institution in an overwhelmingly positive light. If prospective students prefer a marketing pitch to Ringmar’s honesty, they probably shouldn’t be going to LSE.

That’s not, apparently, how many of Ringmar’s colleagues saw it. He was criticized for not using the PowerPoint that had been provided to him (which sounds like a joke, except it isn’t), and was officially reprimanded by the institution. The LSE statement notes: “Following complaints made by staff about the content of Dr Ringmar’s lecture to the open day, and further complaints about offensive and potentially defamatory material in Dr Ringmar’s blog (at that time connected to the LSE website) that came to light after the lecture, Dr Ringmar received a reprimand from his convenor.” I think it’s an extremely tenuous assertion that anything on Ringmar’s blog is defamatory and his blog is on an independent server, not on LSE property. Ringmar deconstructs the statement at length.

I know Howard Davies, Director of the LSE (equivalent to a president or chancellor), and I am truly surprised by the denseness of his reaction: “The issue here is not a policy on blogging, it is whether a colleague can publicly abuse his employer and his colleagues without consequences.” I couldn’t read Ringmar’s speech and see abuse. And it’s easy to see how freedom of speech and freedom of the press (blogging) are deeply linked.

Ringmar doesn’t do himself much credit by comparing his plight to Internet censorship in China, which is absurd, but he gets the main point right:

Everyone who reads this should start their own blog. A blog allows you to speak in public, in your own words and in your own fashion. This is particularly important for people who previously never had a public voice. Blogs are incredibly empowering and as such a great — you could even say a necessary — complement to human rights. If you only have your own blog you can even take on the establishment — and live to tell the tale.

Update Ringmar comments to make clear that he doesn’t compare his situation to that in China. He just believes (rightly) that the LSE authorities shouldn’t behave like Chinese ones. Incidentally, I went back and looked at Ringmar’s prophetic post before he gave his talk to prospective students. Great stuff:

I know nothing about the undergrad programme, and as Swede from Norflondon with a ponytail, I’m not likely to inspire confidence. Last time I talked to prospective students I lost the School thousands of pounds. The only reason they asked me is that everyone reasonable already has buggered off on their respective Easter vacations.

They’ve sent out a pre-prepared Powerpoint presentation with the official sales-pitch which I am expected to talk over. A pre-prepared Powerpoint presentation!!! Who are they kidding??? I have two PhDs and a conscience; I don’t go into a classroom with someone else’s Powerpoints. Surely it is is far better for both the School and for prospective students if I try to tell them as truthfully as I can, in my own words, warts and all, what it’s like to study at an elite university.

Incidentally, I assume Ringmar realizes and is amused that his blog’s title, Forget the Footnotes, is Forge the Footnotes in the URL.

The theme is hokey, but I like the idea of a summer reading list for incoming freshman to my neighbor, University of California Berkeley. Apparently they’ve been doing these reading lists — suggested, but certainly not required — for a couple of decades.

This year’s list has a supposed organizing theme of reading for future presidents, since, allegedly, Berkeley students will go on to be leaders in whatever field they choose. Could be true, I guess. Some of the list is very Berkeley: hey look, Noam Chomsky. I’m disappointed that they’ve picked Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat, rather than a more complete and challenging book on globalization and the rise of Asia.

But other titles are nice surprises. I thoroughly applaud How to Lie With Statistics, a classic from the ’50s, and Antigone, a classic from the 440s BCE. Laurie Garrett’s Coming Plague is fantastic: one of the most gripping and worrying reads of the last decade for me. Some of the other books will certainly make it onto my list for future reads.

I do think, however, that it’s rather feeble that Richard Black, associate vice-chancellor for admissions, “makes it a point” to read one book from the list each summer. Surely he can do better than that?

Mark Schmitt: “It looks to me like the Republican Party doesn’t have a candidate.”

I hadn’t noticed that Robert Reich, the Berkeley economist and Clinton’s first secretary of labor, has a blog. It’s well written, engaging and, to my tastes, absolutely on the mark on many political issues. I’m pretty sure he’s the first cabinet member to blog.

From his first post: “Okay, so I’m blogging and blathering. I never thought it would come to this. But there’s no other way to tell the whole truth. I don’t know if anyone will read this blog, but it’s worth a try.”