12 March 2024

Cui Bono - part the third

Well, I admit to being first in line to make fun of the MARF(party like it's 1829) crowd finding some woke conspiracy behind every galldurn fire hydrant. But the following events are hard to comprehend.

- one of the Boeing Plastic Planes (courtesy of South Carolina sub-GED workers) loses its flight controls and plummets for a moment.

- the man who blew the whistle on the shambles at the Plastic Plane plant turns up dead

With the first report of the 'upset' of the Plastic Plane, it sounded like garden variety clear air turbulence; this is not common, but not unheard of, fits the description of the incident. OTOH, we have the report of a passenger who stated that the pilot told him that the controls froze.
"[The pilot] said my gauges went down, everything went down for one or two seconds and they just lit up again and continued to function."
Now, compare that with what the whistleblower had previously stated:
Barnett, a former quality manager who had worked at Boeing for decades, had "discovered clusters of metal slivers hanging over the wiring that commands the flight controls," according to a 2019 New York Times report cited by CNN.

Barnett told the Times that if those "sharp" slivers "penetrated" the wiring, the result could be "catastrophic."
Only The Shadow knows.

11 March 2024

By The Numbers - part the fifty first

Another day, another clinical trial failure: a schizo drug, been in 'development' since Hector was a pup. This compound with a p-value of .4825; not in the ballpark, but may be the same continent.

The takeaway from all this: CNS (central nervous system) drugs are no better than a crap shoot. Despite all the 'advances' in AI, we humans still don't know how our little grey cells actually work; and what it is that makes them stop working. If we did, we'd have figured all this stuff out a long time ago.

For once a sponsor does say, No mas!!
We will continue to analyze these data with our scientific advisors, but we do not intend to conduct any further clinical trials with pimavanserin.
-- Steve Davis - CEO

08 March 2024

We Don't Need No Education - part the fifth

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts' Culture War is revving into high gear. Here's a recent account of the state of battle.
While teachers don't set the texts pupils read as part of the curriculum, Lee said teachers at his school had had complaints about books offered in classroom libraries. "Public schools should have books that represent all students," he said, explaining he offers age-appropriate titles related to Black history, women's history and Asian American history.
[my emphasis]
[What has been that trope that teachers and their unions are the ones "controlling" teaching?]

'I ain't got but four years of school, and the reddest neck in these here part of the woods, and I'll be Goddamned to let mah 12 kids know mor'n I ever did. Ya don't need no education to walk behind a horse plow or make babies. I do just fine at both. It'd be a damn shame if mah kids got smart and up and went to some big city. And one of the boys married some colored girl? That'd tear mah heart right out.'

And, of course, we've got Gov. DeMented
This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida. We are eliminating the DEI programs.
-- Gov. DeMented
Will the last educated person leaving a Red State please blow up the legislature? Won't hurt anyone; the pols will all be out swigging moonshine from jugs anyway under a cottonwood tree. And whittling KKK crosses for key fobs. Just hillbilly fun times.

By The Numbers - part the fiftieth

One of the sore points against FDA is the power to approve drugs in a provisional manner. If small, early trials indicate that a compound does some good, then the compound is allowed on the market, and the company is required to run a full-blown post-approval trial. This trial is supposed to be run expeditiously, but not always so.
Here's the problem: that postmarketing study has never taken place. In fact, it hasn't even been started. (Edit: looks like they've finally gotten it off the ground since the CRL was issued).
Amylyx developed a drug for ALS under such a protocol, and has run such a trial. And the drug failed spectacularly. The existing, albeit somewhat arbitrary, standard for success in statistical studies is p-value of .05 or smaller. Has been so for decades. The drug pulled .67. Not in the ballpark? Not on the same continent.

I haven't done the digging, but such a result, once again, calls into question the value of FDA giving provisional approval to compounds.

Sarepta's DMD drugs, particularly its first, got provisional approval. The confirmatory studies have not been done expeditiously. And Sarepta used (created?) the tactic of inflaming the patient community to pressure FDA to approve.
Initially, the FDA wanted Amylyx to run another, larger study before submitting its drug for review. But after receiving intense backlash from ALS patients and advocates, who have pressed regulators to be more flexible in evaluating potential treatments, the agency backtracked. Amylyx was allowed to apply for approval while simultaneously running that additional trial.
Note that the EU regulator was not impressed with the initial trials, and didn't approve. I suspect there will be much discussion of the structure and conduct of those promising initial trials.

05 March 2024

By The Numbers - part the forty ninth

Ok, so the NCAA wants to add more teams to their hoop tournament (just the boys, so far according to the story).

What is the point? It appears that the small-time conferences feel they're being trampled by NIL/transfer portal/big deal conferences
[C]ollege basketball administrators fear that power conference schools will consider their own postseason if the NCAA tournament remains unchanged.
That statement makes little sense. It implies that the 'power conference schools' will bolt and have their own tournament if there're not more sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered? What?

The number of 16 seed teams that got past the 1 seed opponent in the first round: 2.

I suppose the 72/76 regime would just extended the play-in round(s)? Whichever way, it's just more cannon fodder for the professional hoop (mostly stateU) schools. Student-atheletes unite!!

We Don't Need No Education - part the fourth

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts' Culture War is revving into high gear. Here's today's account of the state of battle.
While teachers don't set the texts pupils read as part of the curriculum, Lee said teachers at his school had had complaints about books offered in classroom libraries. "Public schools should have books that represent all students," he said, explaining he offers age-appropriate titles related to Black history, women's history and Asian American history.
[my emphasis]
[What has been that trope that teachers and their unions are the ones "controlling" teaching?]

'I ain't got but four years of school, and the reddest neck in these here part of the woods, and I'll be Goddamned to let mah 12 kids know mor'n I ever did. Ya don't need no education to walk behind a horse plow or make babies. I do just fine at both. It'd be a damn shame if mah kids got smart and up and went to some big city. And one of the boys married some colored girl? That'd tear mah heart right out.'

And, of course, we've got Gov. DeMented
This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida. We are eliminating the DEI programs.
-- Gov. DeMented
Will the last educated person leaving a Red State please blow up the legislature? Won't hurt anyone; the pols will all be out swigging moonshine from jugs anyway under a cottonwood tree. And whittling KKK crosses for key fobs. Just hillbilly fun times.

03 March 2024

Eyeless in Gaza

Yes, I purloined the title. Sue me. But there is a point to it; after all this time it finally occurs to me that the USofA intelligent community is falling down on the job. It's well documented that simple commercial satellites have high resolution cameras.
The best commercially available spatial resolution for optical imagery is 25 cm, which means that one pixel represents a 25-by-25-cm area on the ground — roughly the size of your laptop. A handful of companies capture data with 25-cm to 1-meter resolution, which is considered high to very high resolution in this industry.
So, what's been going on with the USofA's satellite imaging since the iconic Keyhole machines of the 1960s?

What can we civilians know about what the intelligence community can see from up in the sky? Here's a long essay.
In laboratory conditions, SAR has achieved resolutions less than a millimeter,
Now, that's implied to not be operational. Color me skeptical. When I was in DC (mid 70s to mid 80s), it was widely known(?) that Keyhole family satellites allowed one to read the NYT. From space. And that public disclosure of such capabilities from the intelligence community was very old news within the community.

What set me off on this old topic? A report in today's (dead trees version) NYT about the fiasco with the relief convoy.
The convoy that arrived in Gaza City before dawn on Thursday ended tragically. More than 100 Palestinians were killed after many thousands of people massed around trucks laden with food and supplies, Gazan health officials said.
Israel and the Palestinians now argue about who did what. Today's NRO (national reconnaissance office) machines certainly are overhead (if not then NRO/NSA/CIA are incompetent) and keeping an eye on all that. At least tell the two sides what really happened.