Salad Is Slaughter

Every once in a while I read something from an animal rights group that basically says that all drug testing on animals can be replaced with mathematical/computer models. I have to wonder what background they have in computer modeling and biological systems. I’ve seen the effects of inaccurate assumptions used in computer models, and they’ve cost millions of dollars, years of effort, and the loss scientific data. A bad assumption in a biological computer model could cost a life.

I spent 14 years of my professional life flying one-of-a-kind science satellites. I got payload operations requirements from the scientists, planned spacecraft operations, monitored vehicle health, wrote command sequences, and so on. Our department was getting ready to launch two satellites within a couple of months of each other. The satellite I was preparing for was to be launched on the standard version of the launch vehicle, while the other satellite would be launched first on a stretched version of the rocket. The standard version had been used a few times in the past, while the stretched version would be on its maiden flight.

The satellite flying on the stretched version of the rocket was interesting in that the payload planners used dice. And not just the kind you find on the craps tables in Las Vegas. They also used 8-sided and 12-sided dice. There may have been some others, too – I don’t remember. The payload scientist wanted his instrument placed into random configurations each orbit, and what better way to get a random configuration than to throw dice? The phrase “has anyone seen the planning dice” was sometimes heard around the complex during shift change.

The big day for the launch of the stretched version of the rocket came. A group of us were watching live video from the chase plane used to monitor the launch. During the flight we noticed that the rocket seemed to “porpoise” in flight. The rocket contrail had a definite wave shape. Then pieces of the rocket started falling off. Several million dollars worth of spacecraft pieces ended up on the bottom of the ocean. Scientists who spent years developing instruments were in tears. My satellites launch was put on hold until the cause of the failure could be determined.

During the hiatus I met with some of the engineers working on my satellite. They were privy to the launch failure investigation and told me what led to the crash. When the company decided to build a stretched version of the rocket so that they could launch heavier spacecraft, they decided to skip wind tunnel testing and instead use a computer model. They felt that they already had a proven version of the standard rocket. The engineers had done complete wind tunnel testing on the standard version and had developed computer models that matched the wind tunnel testing. Modifying the computer model to account for the increased size of the stretched rocket would be easy, they wouldn’t have to verify the results in the wind tunnel, and they would save development time and money. Somewhere along the line they made an assumption that didn’t match reality. The result was a launch failure.

Biological systems are complicated – they are far more complicated and less understood than the aerodynamics of a rocket. If engineers who are intimately familiar with their launch vehicle can make an error in a computer model that causes an accident, how much more likely is it that an error in a biological model will mask problems with a new drug? Animal testing is required because a human’s safety is too important to risk on an inadequate computer model.

I’ve been eagerly waiting for Amazon.com to send me Seasons One and Two of Babylon 5. There’s only a couple of television shows released on DVD that I’ve bought or will consider buying. I want a show that’s special, or unique, or innovative, and can be watched over and over. There are only three television shows on DVD that I’m collecting:

South Park — A ground-breaking comedy that examines social conventions, celebrity, and superstitions while still delivering the occasional fart joke. I always see something new in these episodes. Satan and Mr. Garrison are fascinating characters.

Babylon 5 — The best of what science fiction television can be. They spent money on writers, not just on special effects. The character development is fantastic.

Futurama — A nerd’s paradise of jokes. Where else can you see signs on the wall that say:
10 HOME
20 SWEET
30 GOTO 10

and
10 SIN
20 GOTO HELL

I’m also considering The Simpsons because they are generally high quality and I can watch them repeatedly. If Green Acres were to be released on DVD, I’d probably buy it, too. But so far, that’s it. It looks like all of the Star Trek series are available on DVD, but the only one I’d consider buying is Next Generation. The others, while interesting, just don’t hold up to repeated viewing. The original Star Trek had it’s moments, but to me was overshadowed by the later work — special in it’s day but I don’t want to see those episodes more than once every 5 years or so.

While browsing Amazon.com I noticed that many TV shows are being released on DVD. Is there really that big a market for Friends and CSI DVDs? I’ve never seen Friends, so maybe I missed something big. I’ve seen CSI and it’s good once. I just don’t care to own every episode.

I don’t think DVDs will change how networks create television shows. They’ll still throw a bunch of crap on the screen to what sticks with the public. If they get enough ratings to go over 3 seasons they’ll release a DVD. The networks will still have a difficult time competing with the pay services who decide to produce a series simply because the pay services don’t have the same censorship/family hour/prude factor constraints that the networks have.

Technorati Tags: television

What planet do the members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) come from, and where do they get their ideas about animals? Their statements and positions become so extreme that Jim’s article about the chocolate rabbit and PETCA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Chocolate Animals) actually sounds like a cause that PETA would take up.

I was browsing news stories this morning and came across this gem: Animal Rights Leader Wants to Be Barbecued. Not only does she want to be barbequed, she wants her skin made into leather products, her feet turned into umbrella stands, and her liver given to the French. Yeah, those actions will point out that your organization is made up of rational people.

Other PETA windmill tilts I’ve pulled from various news sources:

PETA Likens Eating Meat To Holocaust. Sure PETA, let’s trivialize the deaths of 6,000,000 Jews, Catholics, and homosexuals murdered by a group of insane men.

PETA Wants Military To Bring Dolphins Home PETA objects to the U.S. Navy’s use of dolphins to find underwater mines in Iraq. These dolphins are well taken care of, never get close to the mines, save human lives, and get paid in fish. The use of the dolphins allowed the U.S. to bring food relief into the country. Saving human lives at no risk to the dolphins sounds pretty good to me.

New PETA Campaign: Got Beer? PETA would have us believe that drinking milk promotes cruelty to cows. I’ve driven past dairy farms, and those cows don’t look abused to me. In fact, it’s in the farmers’ interest to take care of his cattle because they’re his livelihood. I wonder what PETA would have us do with all of those cows if they weren’t used for food. They’ve been selectively bred for thousands of years to be completely dependent upon humans. They can’t survive in the wild, and farmers won’t keep them if they aren’t useful on the farm. In effect, PETA is calling for the extinction of cows.

PETA Says Egg Farms Are Cruel To Chickens I’ve got the same argument here as with the dairy farms. Or do they think that chickens have an emotional attachment to their eggs?

Have the people who founded, run, or join PETA ever had any experience with animals outside of a Disney movie? Animals don’t talk. Carnivores hunt for food and kill their prey — they could not survive as vegetarians. There are some animals that have been selectively bred over millenia for human use and now depend on humans for their species survival. Calling for an end to their use is condemning their species to extinction. And sometimes using animals in scientific trials is necessary in order to save human lives. Anyone who tells you that labs can substitute mathematical models for animal testing doesn’t understand either mathematical models or biological systems.

I believe that we should help preserve our environment, protect endangered species, and treat living creatures as best we can. However, I also believe that anyone who puts an animal’s life ahead of a human life is a traitor to their species.

The current incarnation of Star Trek, Enterprise, is broken and I don’t know if it can be fixed. Enterprise is one of two space-based television shows I record. The other is Andromeda. Well, three space-based television shows I record if you count Futurama.

I watched my recording of Enterprise on Saturday, and the tape of Andromeda last night. This gave me a chance to compare the two shows. My conclusion is that the only thing wrong with Enterprise is everything.

For starters, the scripts for Enterprise just haven’t been very good. You can break that down into two areas — the stories and the character development. The stories aren’t very imaginative. There’s really nothing new happening that we haven’t seen a hundred times before in the previous incarnations of Star Trek. And that’s really hard to do because the writers have a whole new universe to develop. The only restriction is that it must be pretty consistent with the other shows which happen sometime in this show’s future. And it seems to me that they don’t even get that restriction right. They throw in stupid plot lines like the temporal cold war and make the Klingons easy to reach (the other shows implied that they were much further away).

The character development is abysmal. There is very little about the main character’s past, their motivations, their hobbies, etc. that is ever revealed. Everyone of the actors on Enterprise could be replaced with cardboard cutouts, and no one would notice the difference.

Compare Enterprise to Andromeda. The scripts for the most part are interesting and well developed. Andromeda’s real strength comes from the characters. Everyone has a past, and everyone has their own agenda. Machiavelli would get eaten alive by the crew of the Andromeda. Andromeda’s show-to-show consistency isn’t as good as Babylon 5 was, but it’s good enough.

To mis-quote the movie Apollo 13, Enterprise has made space flight boring.

Technorati Tags: television

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” — Autobiography of Mark Twain

I’m suspicious when anyone starts throwing numbers around because you don’t know basic facts like:

• The author’s initial assumptions.
• The source of the numbers.
• The author’s assumptions about the behavior of the system over time.
• How the numbers have been presented — have they been twisted or presented in such a way as to demonstrate a correlation that isn’t there?
• Outside factors that have been ignored because they’re deemed irrelevant or harmful to the author’s position.

And there are times when numbers are just made up because the writer wanted something that sounded official or alarming.

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” — Mark Twain

In 1994 the people of California were asked to vote on a ballot measure that would ban indoor smoking. The main argument for the ban was that so-called second hand smoke caused cancer, and they pointed to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studies as proof. The people of California voted to protect bar and restaurant workers and smoking was banned in indoor public areas.

It turns out that the proponents of the ballot measure lied to us. If you look at simple numbers, it does appear that there is a link between second hand smoke and an increase in lung cancer deaths. However, statisticians have shown that there is no statistical correlation between second-hand smoke and cancer. You can’t look at simple numbers — you have to set up confidence intervals. A federal judge agreed, and ruled against the EPA. If you want a more detailed look, check out http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000602.html I’m glad indoor smoking was banned in California, but I don’t like them lying to me.

“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.” — Mark Twain

There are some groups that claim that 1 to 2 million people have died in Iraq due to the United Nations sanctions imposed in 1990. Taking their middle of the road number, they would have us believe that the United Nations is directly responsible for the deaths of 1,500,000 people.

These groups want me to believe that the United Nations’ embargo cost 115,000 Iraqis their lives each year. The population of Iraq is approximately 23 million. That’s 0.5 percent of the population dying each year, allegedly from U.N. sanctions. I don’t buy it. Where did that number come from? Was it an estimate from the Iraqis? Did they look at the cause of death for the Iraqis who died every year and put them into different piles? How do they identify deaths as belonging to the embargo and not to their governments policies of siphoning wealth to build more palaces, eat gourmet food, and purchase expensive wines? What makes the authors think that Saddam’s government would have allowed more food and medicine and health care reach the people if the embargo was not in place? There’s evidence that only a small percentage of the Iraqi people got food from the U.N’s “food for oil” program. Why would “no sanctions” have been any different?

“… lies, damned lies and statistics.” People will pull some numbers that support their argument and ignore the rest. I’ll continue to be suspicious of numbers various groups throw out to the media unless I know that they can be independently verified and that the statistics actually make sense.