Lifetime Value

As an analyst lifetime value means something rather different than what is generally brought to mind.  Lifetime value is a calculation of the expected value of a converted lead from a specific marketing campaign.  In plain English that means the amount of money a company that advertises some manner of product or service can expect to gain when they sucker in the consumer.  What we assign valut to is an odd thing.  Money is assigned value, strict mathematical value in fact.  Its written on the stuff in fact.  But while a dollar is a tangible thing the value behind it is not.  It can be argued there is value in everything just on differing scales. A Picasso is not of the same value as a five year old’s painting.  Except maybe to that parent.  That picture in thirty years time will mean a whole hell of a lot more than that expensive Picasso.  But I can’t assume all parents might feel that way.  As there are plenty of assholes out there who value stuff more than emotion or memory.

My meandering point has to do with the value of life.  Is the life of an animal worth something?  I’ll answer that for you with yes.  If you argue that’s fine and you are indeed entitled to your opinion.  You’re a fucking monster and wrong but you’re entitled to be so.  But in certain cases I do differ to Harlan Ellison the famous Science Fiction writer who said in his documentary  “No, schmuck, you are not entitled to your opinion.  You are entitled to your informed opinion.  Without information it’s just babble, hot air, and farts in the wind.”  And yes there are people who are too damn stupid to be allowed to voice an opinion.  Hell there are people out there who are so stupid and willfully ignorant they should hardly t be allowed to take in air in case it overtaxes plant life.  But where there is opinion is what value does the life of an animal have in comparison to that of a human.  Fuck you P.E.T.A. stay out of this.  You left your sanity and moral a long time ago. For those of you who think P.E.T.A. is just an organization that supports people to take better care of their pets and like to harmlessly protest a lot I say do your homework.  They are not sane people and the image they project is not like their beliefs.  Now I love animals; I’ve had dogs my whole life.  I’ve only cried a few times as an adult and probably the hardest I’ve ever cried was when we had to put down my sheltie Radar.  I won’t route for my old football team the Philadelphia eagles because they hired Michael Vick.  Not as moving or touching as the other story but ratification of my ferocity in appreciating animal life.  P.E.T.A. is crazy on if Mel Gibson had a baby with Donald Trump level.  Probably a bit less racist but basically very egocentric, self promoting bag of shit.  And what irks me is they hide their crazy so they can bilk innocent housewives out of their money.  And P.E.T.A. hats pet ownership they think all animals should be free.  Because obviously no dog would want to stay cooped up in a nice house and fed regularly and played with.  Obviously not.

But back to value of life.  Obviously, or at least to me, a human life is of greater value than an animals.  Even an asshole with bad toupee and shitty casino line has greater intrinsic value than, say, a donkey.  But it should be argued that animals have value and there has to be reason for them to suffer or die.  Food is an excellent reason for animal death.  I admire vegans and vegetarians and their decision.  I especially admire that decision when they don’t brag or talk about it.  I only on occasion brag about how awesome I am so shut up about not eating bacon.  For you vegans and vegetarians out there if you want I’ll bite the bullet and eat extra meat for you guys then tell you about wonderful it is.  You can thank me in the form of clever dirty limericks or large checks.  I accept and appreciate both.  But I have pretty decent sized problem with food industry and the awful things they do in order to get that food to my mouth.  To counter this I try to by food that is farm fresh or raised humanely.  The food industry, sadly, has not so many regulations put on it when they use terms like free range.  It doesn’t necessarily mean chicken that just walk around in open air doing whatever the hell it is chicken do for a couple of year completely unmolested and happy until the day they shuffled off this mortal coil and prepped for consumption.  They just can’t be cages their whole life.  It doesn’t say how much time they need to be outside the cage or if they can’t be grouped together in such a crush its practically like being in a cage.  I can only hope the animals were actually raised humanely.  Notice the word used to describe ethical treatment contains the word human.  It like we can’t deign to say something is treated well unless it treated like us.  Man are we egocentric as a species.

I don’t mind experimentation on animals.  Now I’m not talking about testing cosmetics on animals with no tear ducts so they can’t cry off makeup.  I’m taking about injecting animals with horrible deadly diseases in order to advance important medical science.  If Bobo had to die to save some orphans with an incurable disease I’ll inject that poor monkey myself.  I’d hope that Bobo was and asshole too and see that his widow had an appropriate banana tree fund set up.

But there are cases of animal cruelty well outside necessary.  This is the part of the article where it gets a bit disturbing and depressing.  If you are super sensitive I suggest against reading further.  You’ve been warned.

The Chinese have a very different set of customs and beliefs than we do.  Nothing exactly prophetic or profound in that that statement.  We can pick apart a nation or groups customs and find the parts we find terrible or lacking and criticize them but the whole of the society is responsible for both these bad bits and the rather awesome bits.  I am martial artist and I love it.  I spend around ten hours a week with Kempo and second art I study (it’s a family style yet to be named).  That’s a lot time I could be wasting playing video games.  I like video games.  So I have a vested interest in some of the culture of China (Kempo sprang from Northern China by way of Japan and then Hawaii).  But the Chinese do have an odd fascination with traditional medicine.  Traditional medicine here pertaining to what we in the West often (and sometimes erroneously) label as bunk.  Sadly to fulfill the need for components the Chinese result to rather awful means.  Like bear farms.  And no I’m not talking about gay men roaming the countryside growing food.  Or the even more awesome idea of bears planting crops.  Then fighting.  Always fighting.  No bear farms are disgusting, bad places.  They lock up bears and remove their bile by sticking needles directly into their gall bladder.  They at least anesthetize them.  Not sure if that is for the bear or for keeper safety.  They cram them in cages and harvest this bile regularly and in case they need to make extra money they lop off a paw or two.  Link to the article below but beware they start with a picture of a bear and it’s hard not project the emotion of terror onto it.  There are arguments that animals do not have true emotions and we simply place our interpretations of expression on them and they simply rely on instinct only.  I rebuff these people by stating they are douche bags.  And yes that is an emotional not an intellectual response.  I choose to believe animals have emotion.  It is “[estimated] that about 20,000 black bears are kept on about 100 bile farms in China.”  So this is not a small problem.  You might say after finding out the reasoning form the extraction that maybe there is no other way to grant such relief.

“Bear bile is prized in traditional Chinese medicine for its alleged ability to relieve muscle aches, joint pains, fever, migraines and hangovers, as well as being a curative for impotence, gallstones, cirrhosis, even cancer. Synthetic compounds are just as effective for many of these ailments, but many Asians, especially Chinese and Vietnamese men of a certain age, favor fresh bile."

So fuck that.

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/finally-outrage-in-china-against-bear-farming/

Don’t think animal cruelty is a strictly Chinese art.  All manner of countries are getting in on this crap.  Hey remember those elephants.  I do.  Remember how we keep spending money to stop those fucker from dying out.  Again yes.  When was the last time you actually heard about the atrocities of ivory poaching…. I’m think maybe the mid nineties.  Probably around the time Captain Planet was cancelled.  Another reason to dislike poachers.  Well maybe not.  But yeah I haven’t thought about elephants being killed in a bit and it seems like poaching isn’t getting any better.  Just ask Cameroon (I know this might be odd but I every time I hear Cameroon I think of Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy on the train in Trading Places).  Three hundred elephants were recently found killed.  And you don’t need to kill elephants to remove their tusks.  But you don’t need to be a horrible person to be a poacher.  Wait, yes you do.  Poachers are bad people.  But they do this becuadse its reasonably easy and profitable.  It come back to crime being profitable and, sadly, reasonably easy.

“Observers in Cameroon have been blaming the raids on poorly trained and ill-equipped park guards, who are pitted against professional gangs of poachers.”

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/20/world/africa/cameroon-elephants-killed/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

But, hey, two out of five continents being reasonable awful to animals isn’t so bad.  Australia can’t be awful to animals as they have a strong union and they are god damn terrifying in that country.  It’s like evolution had a date with fucking murder movie and got worse.  Then they added spiders.  Fuck you Australia.  Fuck you so hard.

But, hey, why not add the United States?  But if we are talking Amurika we should be talking reality tv.  They are growing synonymous.  I wonder if election voter rates would increase if it was linked to reality television…. Sadly, why I know this parody it might actually work.  I can’t tell if that’s hopeful cynicism or just bitterness or something only the Germans have create  word for.  Those Germans do create some wonderful words.  Schadenfreude.  I say relaoity television because there is a show my mother would often watch called Aniaml Cops.  Which was basically awful.  You see neglected animals and bad people who own them and then later you see these animals get better and adopted.  Usually there is the occasional dead animal or animal so messed up they can never let them be adopted.  I can never be adopted as I’m food aggressive… that may have been inappropriate.  I coat sadness and disappointment with humor.

So there is this:  “Nearly 100 dogs were found abused and in deplorable condition at the site of an animal rescue group in Wingo, Kentucky that was set up to save them and give them a chance for a new life.”

http://www.care2.com/causes/100-dogs-saved-from-abusive-animal-rescue-group-slides.html

And we come full circle with this bullshit.  I’m especially disturbed that this place is a rescue group and its committing this bullshit.  So we are toping cruelty with hypocrisy and we don’t have cultural difference to explain away the awful.  Ah, America you’re number one.  Did the italics for sarcasm work?  I’m not so sure.

Ben