At the beginning of 2008, SIS was
limping along with only six minor contracts that provided a small annual income
of about $15,000. This was a big
decrease from the earlier ten to fifteen contracts of which three or more were major
and yielded an annual income of $150,000 to $250,000. Now, after paying Diane’s salary and our
health insurance, the business was operating at a loss. The good news was that since I wasn’t
spending as much time on my business, I did have time to work on the last paper
I wanted to publish. Developing the
statistics for that paper required calculations using SAS software. However, I could no longer use the SAS
program on my PC to perform statistical or mathematical calculations.
I say “my PC,” but it had actually been a
Pfizer PC that they did not want returned after my contract expired in 2006. Pfizer also canceled my access to their St.
Louis computer and the license for SAS on the PC. The cost of an annual license to retain SAS on
the PC was more expensive than I could justify.
Access to SAS was important. I
not only needed it to perform the calculations for my paper, but also for the
needs of my remaining clients. They
often wanted their biological assays validated to show they were producing the results
for which they were designed. The FDA
considered the use of SAS procedures acceptable for that purpose, but not
calculations in Excel. Luckily, one of
my remaining clients gave me remote access to a system with SAS.
I was so glad that my first paper, “Defining
the linear portion of a sigmoid-shaped curve: bend points,” had been
published. Its findings would be used in
the next paper, “Guidelines for accurate EC/IC50 estimation.” I had personally seen too many instances of
these values being put into a database when the values actually had very
doubtful accuracy. If I did a thorough
job, this next paper should prove beneficial to the entire scientific community. It would take most of the year to do the
calculations and writing of my next paper so that I could submit it to a peer
reviewed journal. My task started with
programming SAS using its nonlinear curve procedure to fit the usual type of dose-concentration
curves for biological assay data. The
equations for each curve were then used to calculate an EC/IC50 (effective/inhibitory
concentration at 50% response).
Typical dose-concentration curve
To demonstrate that the recommendations I made
in the paper were valid for a wide range of assay conditions, I considered 81
scenarios, randomly generating five hundred sets of assay data for each one,
requiring SAS to fit 40,500 curves. After
writing the SAS program I began making test runs. At first, the program would “blow up” with an
error code. Each test took several hours
or overnight to run. Finally, I got the
results I could use to develop the figures and tables for the paper.
I wrote an introduction to the topic,
description of the issues, methodology, results, and conclusions. Because of the precision required, academic
writing is not easy, and like any writing, it requires review, then more
review. I felt the need for help and
reached out to Nancy, who was the chair of the Department of Statistics at the
University of Missouri. She was very
gracious, widely published herself, had worked with many graduate students, and
agreed to read my paper and help me get it in shape for publication. It turned out that she and her husband (who
also worked for the university) lived nearby and we became friends as well as
colleagues.
Meanwhile, I continued to do volunteer work in
Columbia. There was a citizen committee
whose purpose was to evaluate the five sites being proposed for the next high
school. The Columbia Public Schools
Superintendent, Phyllis Chase, called and asked me to advise her on how to best
evaluate these sites. At a meeting in
her office, she told me that her initial idea was to have each committee member
rank the sites in order of 1 to 5 (1 being the highest recommendation). By calculating the average for each site, the
sites with the lowest value would have the highest recommendation. I recognized that as the most common mistake
made by non-statisticians, because it assumes all sites just differ by a value
of 1. However, some sites may be about
equally worthy, while others shouldn’t be considered at all.
I proposed an alternative approach of first
rating each site before ranking them. I
recommended they make a list of the important site attributes that should be
considered, for example, land acquisition cost, surrounding streets and roads,
availability of utilities and so forth.
This helps ensure all the committee members are looking at the same
aspects. Site by site, the committee
members should evaluate each attribute as well as the site overall using a
scale such as 1=very good to 7=very bad.
Not going into details, an average score could then be derived for each
site. These scores could then be
arranged in rank order from lowest to highest, the lowest score indicating the
most highly recommended site. Using this
method there is the opportunity for two or more scores to be very low indicating
they were the best sites and further evaluation of them might be warranted. This method would provide the most defensible
way of making the recommendation of a location for the next high school. I enjoyed being able to provide this help to
the school system.
In February 2008, Ragtag moved to its new
location on Hitt Street, just in time for the True/False Film Festival. The documentary film festival started in
2004, but it was a few years before Diane and I joined in. This year Earlene and Vince (my sister and
her husband) attended with us for the first time. In addition to our earlier contributions,
Diane and I donated money to have our names placed on the back of two seats in
the large Ragtag theater. The Uprise
Bakery also relocated to the same old Coca Cola building as well as a video
rental business.
We spent March preparing for our next adventure. The National Wildlife Federation hired a
company to prepare an exciting trip to China.
It not only included the traditional stops at notable locations, but
also visits to research and animal breeding facilities in many parts of the
country. What an unusual
opportunity! We were able to convince
two women we had traveled with on several Olivia trips, Fran and Leslie, to
join us. Fran was a Ph.D. psychologist
and Leslie was a technical expert in computer security. They couldn’t pass up the opportunity to
visit pandas.
In preparation, Diane and I enrolled in an adult
learning class at Rockbridge High School to learn some Chinese. Comparing my ability to hear the intonations
of the Chinese language to other students in the class, it became obvious to me
that I just couldn’t negotiate the language, and I quickly gave up. We got our typhoid vaccine shots, Chinese
visas and planned our own pre-trip.
The main trip began in Beijing, but American
Airlines, our preferred carrier, only flew directly to Shanghai. Therefore, we planned to spend a few days in
Shanghai. In April 2008, we flew from
St. Louis through Chicago and Tokyo. We
were nervous about negotiating transportation from the Shanghai airport, so we asked
the hotel to arrange our transfer to the Marriott Renaissance Hotel Pudong,
Shanghai (where I could use my Marriott points). We enjoyed the concierge facility at the top level
of the hotel, particularly at night when we could view the light displays on
the tall office buildings. Our room had amazing
features, like the outside corner where two walls of glass came together with
no apparent bracketing. We could only
hope the glass walls were joined so tightly that we didn’t have to worry about
them breaking apart.
Nighttime view of displays on office
buildings
The hotel helped arrange an English-language
city tour the next morning. A nice young
Chinese man took us to several places, including Century Park, the Shanghai History
Museum, a monastery, and a market where we saw cages of small animals and
crickets for sale. Our Denver cricket
scientist friend, Joe, would have loved it.
The crickets were not being sold for food, but for cricket fighting. At lunch, our guide chided us to not leave one
grain of rice in our bowl. As a child our
parents told us to clean our plates saying “Think of all those poor starving
children in China.” Was his reason the same, or just local good
manners? We weren’t sure.
Our guide
Scale model of Shanghai at the History
Museum
Fighting
crickets for sale
Our guide dropped us back at the hotel and
after refreshing, we took a walk in the neighborhood. In 2008, China had yet to tear down all the
old parts of Shanghai. We walked out the
front doors of the hotel, turned left on the sidewalk, walked down the street, turned
left again and into a different world.
After walking another block or two, we entered ancient China. We saw people carrying their towels to use in
the bathhouse and buckets of night soil to empty in the community disposal site. Of course, we saw many contrasting views
during our visit, such as modern cars on the same street with animal carts.
Old part of town in foreground
That afternoon, we took the hotel
transportation to the airport for our flight to Beijing. We waited at the domestic airport terminal in
Beijing for our promised National Wildlife driver. We tried to find someone who spoke English so
they could help us get in contact with our tour people, but we had no luck. Finally, we went outside where our travel
experience told us there would be a line for taxis. When we got to the front of the line, we kept
saying “English, English.” We were
directed to Tony Wei's Beijing Taxi and a cab driven by a man who spoke the language
very well. After our experience in
Sydney, we were prepared and handed him the paper with the name and address of
our hotel. He described the sights, but
I was struck by all the magpies roosting in the small trees on the way out of
the airport. We heard many times about
China’s efforts to combat pollution by planting trees. When we reached our hotel, we learned that our
tour leaders had been looking for us at the international airport, not
remembering that we were arriving on a domestic flight.
The next morning, we met the rest of our
tour group. We enjoyed seeing our
friends, Fran and Leslie, and soon discovered there were also two gay men on
the trip. Our group of six often ate
meals together. The first day we toured
the famous sights in Beijing, including Tiananmen
Square, the Mao Mausoleum, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the
Bird’s Nest. Visiting Tiananmen Square
brought back memories of watching on TV the massacre that occurred there in
1989. There was a very long line of Chinese
families waiting to walk by Mao’s body on display in his Tomb. Our group was taken to a shorter tourist line,
and I walked by quietly. We were also
able to enter the nearby Great Hall of the People, used by the government for
legislative and ceremonial activities. We
drove by the Bird’s Nest, the stadium for the Olympic games which were
scheduled to start in August. We saw
caterpillars along with mule-drawn vehicles all at work on the grounds. After lunch we visited the Liulichang Culture
Street where we were told about early methods of creating various art and
written objects. That night, there was a
special family-style welcome dinner at a restaurant in an older part of the
city.
Chinese family posing in front of Mao’s Tomb in Tiananmen Square
Part of the Forbidden City
Summer Palace
Bird’s Nest Under Construction
The next day we drove out of Beijing to
what we were told was a less frequented entrance and the best restored section
of the Great Wall of China. We were free
to walk along the three-mile section, enjoying the view between the ancient towers.
I was in one of the towers and spotted a
wasp flying around. I was content to
just shoo it away, but the guard was not.
I was surprised by his determination for the kill. While departing the Great Wall, we saw the
staff preparing for a visit by a diplomatic dignitary. As we drove away, we could see a soldier
stationed on every block. It was quite a
display of military personnel. After
lunch, we drove to the area containing the Thirteen Tombs of the Ming Dynasty. Only a few were restored for public viewing.
Great Wall up and down between towers
Leslie taking picture of me walking along
with Fran
The next day, we were up early for our
flight to Harbin in the far north of China.
This was our second in-country flight with many more to come. The Harbin architecture reflected the Russian
influence from when Russian engineers helped construct the eastern end of the
Trans-Siberian Railroad.
After lunch, we left for the Siberian Tiger
Park. We were eager to see the
tigers. We all got in a van that had many
windows for viewing and a sliding roof. The
van drove around an enclosure containing prowling tigers who were watching us
carefully. A man in our van was handed a
live chicken and instructed to throw it out the roof. We watched the tigers stalk, kill, and devour
the chicken. They must have been hungry
tigers. Then we were asked if anyone
wanted to contribute money for more chickens, repeating the entire exercise
several times. It was pretty brutal.
Siberian Tigers in their fenced enclosure
Van from which chickens were thrown through
the roof
Stalking tiger
Siberian Tiger with chicken
After we left the van, we visited the zoo
portion of the park where we saw an albino tiger. Finally, we met with the park’s director and
learned about their breeding program and the leasing of Siberian tigers to zoos
around the world, including the US.
Park directors
Before the day ended, our group was given a
city tour of Harbin, visiting Liansheng Square and Sophia Church, a former
Russian Orthodox church that now houses an art gallery with photographs of the
city over time.
Sophia Church in square
Inside Sophia church
Early the next morning, we boarded a train
for the two-and-a-half-hour trip north to Qiqihar, a rural farming community. When we arrived, the town was not what I
expected. Every block in both Shanghai
and Beijing seemed to have someone with a broom sweeping the street and I never
saw any litter. Here, there were papers and
plastic bags blowing around, and it looked even dirtier than most US cities. I
was left wondering why it was different.
A van took us to the Zhalong Nature Reserve,
a marvelous wetland. An expert
ornithologist led us through the reserve, renowned for its birding in general,
but for its large crane population in particular. We spotted several of the rare red-crowned
cranes, known as a symbol of luck, longevity, and fidelity. Many of these cranes were penned to protect
them while breeding. Local farmers were paid
to grow and harvest grain that was distributed in the area to lure birds to the
wetlands. On our way to the visitor
center, we stopped to visit the primitive hut of a family who worked the fields. From
the look of the souvenirs at the visitor center, like the nested dolls, we
could tell that many of the tourists were Russian.
Grain for cranes
Red-crowned cranes
Diane and I posing in front of reserve
Farmer’s home
Kitchen
After the train ride back to Harbin, we had
dinner. In the north, I was surprised by
the dishes containing potatoes, not a vegetable I had ever seen served in a US Chinese
restaurant. As we traveled south, I never
saw them served again either. We were
becoming accustomed to the style of our meals, where many selections were
served and passed around the table.
Diane would taste test the dishes and warn me if one was too spicy hot. If it was not hot and really looked good to
me, I would take a big helping. Otherwise, I might just pass it on, as there
were always many dishes to choose from. Diane
and I usually had a glass of beer for our beverage, as it was never strong. We reasoned that a slightly alcoholic drink
might be safer than water, and neither of us enjoyed tea or soda. I could tell
there would be no new dishes when a dessert was served.
The next morning, we left for Xian taking
our third and fourth airplane rides in China.
Flying in China was never pleasant.
The planes were always very full.
Upon seeing the start of an exodus, we learned to jump up and get into
the aisles with our elbows out if we wanted to make any progress getting out of
the airplane. All of the passengers, men
and women alike, were very pushy. Also,
the pollution was awful, often bringing tears to my eyes even high up in the
airplane. We hoped to avoid head colds.
Our hotel in Xian was a short walk from the
Wild Goose Pagoda, one of the most famous Buddhist pagodas in China. Early
the next morning, we attended a Tai Chi lesson at the hotel, but did not enjoy
it at all. The instructor was very
strict and did not like the way we did the form, spending a lot of time
correcting our posture, moving our feet and arms. We should have known better and wouldn’t
repeat the effort on this trip.
Me at the Wild Goose Pagoda
Tai Chi instructor
After breakfast we visited the Emperor
Qin's Army of Terracotta Warriors. They
were accidentally discovered by farmers in 1974. In 1979, a museum was built over the pit to
protect the army of over 6,000 life-sized soldiers and horses that would
ultimately be unearthed. We enjoyed
lunch at a nearby restaurant where we could watch workers stretching and making
the noodles we had for lunch. These were
the best noodles I have ever eaten. In
the afternoon, we visited other sites in Xian including the Great Mosque and
the Muslim Quarter, which had primarily become a tourist destination.
Terracotta Warriors under cover
Terracotta Warriors up close
Great Mosque of Xian
The next day we took our fifth flight to
Chengdu. First, we visited the giant panda
Breeding Research Base where an expert led us on a tour of their many
semi-natural enclosures. It was like a
panda zoo. The pandas were all happily
chewing on bamboo leaves, the only kind of leaves their digestive systems
tolerate. Panda populations are threatened
by the human destruction of bamboo groves.
I was surprised to see one small red panda that reminded me of a raccoon.
Panda eating bamboo
Red panda
After lunch, we loaded into a van for the
ride from Chengdu through the mountains on a very hilly, curvy road, passing
villages of rundown houses before arriving at the Giant Panda Conservation and
Research Center located within the Wolong Nature Preserve. There was one nearby motel and one
restaurant. Like some of the other
places where we stayed during this trip, we were amused to see condoms in the nightstands
courtesy of the Chinese government. We
were turned off by the dead fish floating in the water usually present in
Chinese restaurants from which patrons chose the fish they wanted served. No fish for us! Despite all this, we slept and ate well.
The next day, an expert at the center
described their goal of increasing the captive population of giant pandas, with
the ultimate purpose of releasing them into the wild. Meanwhile, like the Siberian
tigers, the pandas were leased to zoos.
The San Diego Zoo cooperated in the breeding program. We then toured the facility meeting the
pandas in zoo-like enclosures and hearing how the breeding program operated,
particularly how the females were acclimated to the males before mating was
attempted.
Panda directors
Panda playground
Then the moment our friends had waited for
arrived. They were given a plastic sheet
to place over their clothes and a baby panda was brought for them to hold on
their laps, eliciting big smiles. Diane
and I did not participate in this exercise.
Cats were the only animal I wanted to touch, and Diane wanted nothing to
do with any animal.
Smiling Fran with panda
We left Wolong on April 20. Only a month later, on May 12, a huge
earthquake rocked the area including the panda center, killing several guards
and a panda, injuring other pandas while some escaped into the surrounding
forest. Some British tourists who were
staying at the same motel we had used had to be evacuated by helicopter. Many of the villages we had passed were
almost leveled. We were lucky to have
been there when we were!
Our vehicle made the treacherous trip back
to Chengdu, and after lunch, we had two more airline flights to reach the
southernmost city in China we were visiting, Jinghong, near the borders of Myanmar
(Burma) and Laos. This is an
interesting part of China populated by the Dai people who even write in a
different script from most of China.
Note the different script on the left side
of the sign
The next morning, we drove to the XishuangBanna Wild Elephant Valley and Tropical
Botanical Garden. We rode a cable car up
the valley and hiked back down, led by a local expert, looking for wild
elephants. We saw many stands in the trees
that visitors used for that purpose, but failed to spot any elephants ourselves. We visited a butterfly farm and viewed the
local flora and fauna that inhabited this rainforest. On the way out, I was disturbed by two
sights. One was a live bear chained to a
post ostensibly to entertain the guests.
The other was the only elephant we saw, a small, lonely looking elephant
tethered to the ground so visitors could say they had seen an elephant. In the afternoon we walked through their
botanical garden with a botanist.
Cable car up the valley
Elevated walk to see elephants and stands
Chained bear
Small Asian elephant
After dinner, we had the wonderful
experience of participating in the local Water Festival entertainment. Our group had front row seats in a
theater. We didn’t initially realize
that we were sitting in front of a section that was full of water. The entertainment on the stage consisted of
dancing to music with liberal splashing of water on each other signifying good
luck. Towards the end, our group was
given plastic to spread on our bodies, and the action changed in that the
splashers were now in the area in front of us and we received a lot of good
luck water. What fun!
Water Festival pictures
Oh boy! Two more flights, first from Jinghong to
Kunming where we had lunch and a tea ceremony.
Then on to Chongqing where our cruise down the Yangtze
River would embark. Before boarding
we had a brief city tour and then visited the China Three Gorges Art Exhibition
Center. We had read the book by Peter
Hessler entitled River Town. It
told the story about his two years with the Peace Corps teaching English to
students living in a town on the Yangtze.
The city had marked lines on the streets indicating how high the water
would come when the water had finished filling behind the dam. We would be traveling by that town. After dinner, we walked across boards to
access the President 1 cruise ship.
Yangtze River passenger boats
We spent three nights on board the ship. We were told that on the last night there
would be a talent show by both the tourists and the staff. I discovered that a woman with a different
tour group was also a University of Kansas graduate. We agreed to do a Rock Chalk Jayhawk chant after
singing the KU alma mater for the talent show.
The next day the ship stopped at Fengdu for a shore excursion to the “Ghost
City on Ming Mountain.” It had shrines that
combined the cultures of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism along with the
mystique of ghosts. Diane and I could
understand and accept all of it except the stories about the ghosts.
The next day, I was able to go out on deck
to view the scenic Outang and Wu Gorges.
However, I had developed the dreaded head cold and did not go with Diane
on that day’s shore excursion. It was
called Shennong Stream and included a small boat trip through narrow
rapids. I also did not participate in
the talent show that night, staying in bed drinking more chicken soup. I felt well enough at Sandouping to go view
the dam and locks. Impressive! We left the ship at YiChang. We stopped at yet another state-run store
selling art where we bought two paintings.
One was entitled The Girl Who Raised the Chicken and another reminded
us of our trip to the crane reserve. It used
silk embroidery to represent a pine tree and red-crowned cranes. These were added to our other purchases on the
trip: a small carved jade dragon, a silk quilt and box of tea.
Yangtze River gorge
Men pulling small boats through rapids
Talent show that I missed
Diane and me at the dam on the Yangtze
Locks at the dam for boats to be able to go
up and down the river
We flew from Yichang to Beijing where we
had a sumptuous farewell dinner of
Peking Duck. The next day Diane and I
flew back to Shanghai, our eleventh flight in China. After a good night’s sleep at the Renaissance
Yu Garden Hotel, we enjoyed a final city tour.
It included a stroll along the Bund, a riverfront area that had been famous
for its international flavor. Even
though we were weary of flying, Diane and I steeled ourselves for two more flights
that would return us to our home.
The Bund
