Right to Life

Personal

Mike Duigou got me thinking about the whole "Right to Life" topic. So has CNN. Allow me to post a brief personal commentary on this important subject.

First of all, it seems self-evident to me (and the founders of our nation and our universe) that humans have an inalienable right to life. Webster defines inalienable as "incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred". Here are some foundational texts that support this concept and upon which our national identity and our laws and our ethics are based:

Declaration of Independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Constitution of the United States of America
Amendment V & XIV: No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...

The Hippocratic Oath (has provided moral guidance to physicians for 2500 years)
I will not give a fatal draught (read: deadly drug) to anyone if I am asked, nor will I suggest any such thing. Neither will I give a woman means to procure an abortion.

The Holy Bible (King James Version)
Exodus 20:13   Thou shalt not kill. (read: murder)

Unfortunately we have a national history of legally depriving (alienating) entire groups of people of their basic rights based primarily on prejudice (slavery) or convenience (abortion). We've since corrected our moral failure in one of these areas. Tragically, we seem to be on the verge of adding another disgrace to our national record... permitting the taking of life based on a misguided sense of compassion (involuntary euthanasia). Holland decriminalized euthanasia in 1984 and today one in five assisted suicides is without explicit consent, and this form of death has risen to 3% of all deaths in Holland. It's not inconceviable that America might someday  give doctors the right to terminate the life of deformed children and the eldery without consent.

There are also several reasonable and legitimate ways in which our legal system provides for exemptions to an individual's right to life. For example, a person may choose to waive that right (eg: a living will, voluntary assisted suicide) and have their life terminated by another. Or that right may be withdrawn by a court based on a conviction of a capital crime (eg: death sentence). Or that right may be justly and forcefully preempted thru police action, acts of war, Presidential Order (sanctioned assassination of an enemy of the State), or (self) defense. Finally, a guardian may, under certain circumstances, make the choice to terminate the life of someone under their care (eg: a brain dead child or spouse).

I do believe that long-term medical life-support should be only applied to sustain life when there is a clear expectation of a reasonable recovery of a desired quality of life. Yes, I know those are ambiguous terms, wide open to (mis)interpretation. Naturally there will be cases about which reasonable people with no hidden agenda or conflict of interest might disagree. It is in these cases, where there is no living will (or decision by a devoted/informed guardian) and there does not exist compelling evidence of a persistent state of unconsciousness, that a society must choose life over death. It is simply not our place to play God. While it might be technically possible to sustain the biological "life" of a child with no brain wave activity using an iron lung, a kidney dialysis machine, a catheter, and heart bypass pump, no rational/loving person would desire an extended expression of technology overriding nature in a case like this.

However, the present case of Terri Schiavo stretches our ability to divine an ethically appropriate resolution to a life that is clearly demonstrating some level of cognitive ability. If our society prevails to involuntarily euthanize her, we should at least follow the humane process we use to terminate those on death row... inject her with pain killers followed by quick acting drug to stop her heart. How can we allow an innocent invalid who can't speak or scream in pain to starve to death over a period of one to two weeks! Try going without water for a day or two and see how you feel. That's pure torture and is as sick and barbaric as ripping apart a perfectly viable full-term baby from the womb their mommy. Yes, those are emotional words. For an unimaginable act.

Right to Life can be a complex issue at the boundary conditions and corner cases. However, those are extremely rare. The vast majortiy of cases of slavery, abortion, and euthanasia are easily resolved by simply considering the value of life and the motives of those who desire the termination of life or the alienation of rights.

March 21, 2005 09:00 PM EST Permalink

Competitive Takeout Conundrum

Puzzles

Sun Microsystems has kicked off a new sales initiative. To stimulate new revenue, 200 small but lethal "A" teams have been assigned to as many prospect accounts around the world - small but strategic/growth accounts with no Sun kit to date.

The teams were given an initial task to assess these accounts w.r.t. competitive server installed base, to help plan assault tactics. Here are the complete results of that study:

• 104 accounts have IBM, 81 have HP, and 125 have Dell.
• 39 accounts have IBM and HP, 58 have IBM and Dell, and 50 have HP and Dell.
• 16 accounts have ONLY IBM and HP on their floor.

A Sigma Black Belt (an expert in SixSigma methods) was assigned to analyze the data.

How many of the accounts did the Black Belt find that did not have any servers from IBM, Dell or HP?

March 21, 2005 09:22 AM EST Permalink

Sebring & Sun: The Races

Personal

My son, my dad, and I went to the 12-hours of Sebring race yesterday! It was a great time... perfect weather and lots to see and do and experience. Oh, and there was a car race as well :-) The Audi R8 has owned this race for years! The above isn't the actual car that won, but the same model. It beat out Corvette CR-6s, the new Aston Martin DBR9s, Porsche 911s, Maserati MC12s, Lola EX257s, Saleen S7Rs, Dodge Vipers, Ferrari 550 Maranellos, and others,  After 6 years, Audi will debut the R10 next year, which should secure the gold for another generation.

If you haven't been to a car race before (I must be one of the few that hadn't), Sebring is the first and longest race in the annual American Le Mans Series. It's a "street race" (unlike Daytona's NASCAR style) on a 3.7 mile loop on an old WWII airfield with flat hairpin corners that require strategic down shifting and braking. The longest straight segment allows cars to approach 200mph! Average lap speed can exceed 120mph. This year 37 cars started (and 18 finished) the 300+ lap race. Each car has a pit crew and several drivers. There are four classes of cars (each capable of different top and cornering speeds) racing together, making it a very different race than, say, the Indy 500.

Like a golf tournament, there are 4 days of racing (Wed-Sat) leading up to Saturday's main event. Many thousands of people lined up on Wednesday to drive their RVs and U-Haul trucks and School Buses and other interesting forms of transport onto the grounds for an extended campout/party. Some built scaffolding along the course on which they placed sofas! It's March after all - Spring Break time. People watching was as entertaining as the race itself! A friend of mine has gone every year since 1959.

There were also many interesting "sponsor" displays, including race cars in various stages of (de)construction, allowing fascinating views of the internals of the cars.

As we watched the cars fly by our viewing area (we set up our canopy and chairs on a grassy knoll between turns 6 and 7), my dad and I discussed the stresses involved in engines that propel these cars ~1300 miles at an average speed of well over 100 mph, much of it accelerating out of a total of over 4000 turns over 12 solid hours. Each piston cycles about 5 million times! We wondered, at red line speed, how fast those pistons move (12 hours is a long time to talk :-). Are those piston heads traveling faster (inside the cylinder) than the car itself? Reflecting on riding my bike at 20mph, I knew my feet (acting like a piston) don't move that fast... so I guessed that car pistons at red line would move slower than a car's top speed.

Well, I had to figure it out. The math is easy. Obviously piston speed is tied to RPM and Stroke Length, and just indirectly related to the car's forward motion (you can spin the engine in neutral at a standstill). At one of the displays I found out that the typical stroke length for these types of engines is 2.5-3.5 inches, and the typical red line is 8,000-10,000 RPM. Note that RPM measures the crankshaft rotation rate, not the camshaft, which is rotating at half that speed, as shown in this animated GIF:

Since speed is distance/time, and since the piston head travels 2*StrokeLength (up and down) for each cycle, the *average* piston speed is:

Therefore, a car traveling at nearly 200 mph, at the engine's red line, will have pistons traveling at an average of only around 51mph! I was right.

But wait... that piston starts and stops 18,000 times every minute, accelerating to the next stop just 3 inches away (at a huge "G" force). Average speed does not really answer the question. I had to figure out the peak piston speed. Since it literally explodes from a dead stop (it's a combustion engine after all), possibly the peak speed exceeds the speed of the car?

It turns out that the peak speed equation is complex, with sin/cos kinds of rotational acceleration factors. I took the easy way and looked up stats from several types of race car engines using Google. The ratio of peak to average piston speed is consistently very close to 1.6:1.  So at Sebring, the pistons never traveled faster than about 82 mph.

Even a Formula 1 (NASCAR) car, with an engine that can red line at 19,000 RPM, that has a stroke length of about 1.65 inches and a top speed ~240 mph, will have pistons that average: 2*19000*1.65 = 60mph, and peak at: 95mph. See footnote below.

So, why did I include "Sun" in the Subject Title? Check out the Rearview Mirrors. We're a sponsor!

http://lordcaffeine.com/wordpress/index.php?cat=2
At 19,000 rpm, 316.7 revolutions and 1,583.3 ignitions take place each second in the BMW F1 engine. 9,500 engine speed measurements are made, the pistons cover a distance of 25 metres, and 550 litres of air are drawn in. In the P84, maximum piston acceleration was 10,000g. Peak piston speed was 40 metres per second.

March 21, 2005 08:10 AM EST Permalink