Gay of the Day: Germs and Ghost towns

I haven't known Andy for long but from the little I've learned he seems like a fascinating gay. Also, he works for a non-profit that hosts a web site which allows you to send people you've slept with e-cards telling them you have an STD and they should get tested. Awesome. It was hard for me to resist sending these cards to all my friends, because you can send them anonymously. Apparently, not everyone is as morally conflicted as me...

How do you know Mel?

I know Mel because she and Fig ate Papusas with me one night. Then we just started turning up at the same time in the same place.


Where are you from?

I grew up in Santa Cruz, but I only had a short granola-y phase.

Where did you go to school, what did you study and why?

I double majored in Molecular biology and Gender studies at UC Santa Cruz. I have always loved microbiology and at Santa Cruz I got to work on Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria that causes ulcers. I loved organizing little colored tubes into rainbows and pipetting tiny amounts of scary chemicals and spelling things with E. coli on agar plates. I'm usually not a very organized person, but there's something about a meticulous experiment that makes me really happy. After working for a few years I got my Masters in Public Health from Berkeley focusing on infectious disease. Public health made sense to me because I didn't want to spend my life hovered over molecules, I wanted to think about people. So infectious diseases + people + systems of power = public health.

Why do you love science and germs?

I'm really into evolution. With bacteria and viruses you can basically see it happening. Because of this, infectious diseases are something that will never go away. We can make vaccines and give antibiotics but there will always be something new. It's an exciting and challenging thing. I've always loved science. I used to draw pictures of all of the planets in their orbits.

What do you do for your job?

I'm the program director at a non-profit that uses technology to communicate important sexual health information. This means that I write grants and articles and help with intervention design. I'm also the person that directs much of our program evaluation and I'm one of our main health department liaisons. Mobile technologies are starting to take off in public health right now, so many of our future projects will involve creating systems that people can access with their phones.

How many STDs do you have?

Zilcho. I'm one of the most overly tested people I know.

Are you tempted to send people you dislike anonymous cards telling them they have an STD?

I only use my powers for good.



If you could have any job, what would it be?

I would like to be the creative director somewhere that communicates science-y stuff using interactive technologies. Or some funny guy on NPR that gets to tell a nerdy story once a week. I would also like to travel all over the world and be a writer that reports on ghosttowns. I also want to be a dad.

What do you do for fun?

I love to go camping and find ghosttowns and crawl into dark dangerous tunnels. I love to travel in general and I wish I had more time off to do it. Other underdeveloped hobbies of mine include unicycling and banjo playing.


Why do you needlessly risk your life running around ghosts towns and abandoned mine shafts in a place called Death Valley?

I love learning about the sordid history of western expansion and the gold rush. I think it's nuts that people actually built whole mining operations in places that regularly top 130 degrees. I guess I just like adventure...but I only go to the desert in the spring and fall. Does that make you less worried?

Do you have any pets and whats your fav thing they do?

I have one cat named Birdy who I rescued from the SPCA. She'll be four next month. My favorite thing that she does curl up under the covers. She does lots of strange things though, like lick my hair and beard and suck on her tail. The last two and half inches of her tail is rarely dry.

Where is your favorite place you've ever been?

Lost Burro Mine in Death Valley or Tranquebar, India.

Where do you most want to travel to next?

I want to drive up to the arctic circle and I want to see more ghost towns in Arizona and New Mexico.