Gaussling is a senior scientist in the chemical business. He occasionally breaks glassware, spreads confusion and has been known to generate new forms of hazardous waste. Gaussling also digs aerospace, geology, and community theatre.
Poltroon University will soon host a lecture by Big Prize Laureate Dr. Professor Guss Badeen of the Swiss Federal Institute of Quantum Spot Studies in Outerlocken, Switzerland. Dr. Badeen began his work at the Soviet All-Union Agriculture and Artillery Institute in Pissov-on-Don, USSR. After the entertaining implosion of the Soviet Union, Academician Badeen made his way to Switzerland where he is now Emeritus Langweilig Professor of Quantum Agriculture. He will speak on the topic of “My Journey to Sweden with Quantum Spots.”
Admission is free but due to limited seating in the Alderaan auditorium, tickets will be required. Tickets can be obtained online at poltroon_univ.org/QSpot.
Poltroon University is located in Guapo, Arizona, adjacent to the scenic Desiccated Wasteland National Monument. Poltroon is a selective private illiberal arts institution serving the educational needs of junior varsity students. On campus visits are welcome.
Congratulations are in order to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their Nobel Prize winning work with a COVID-19 vaccine using modified mRNA. The image below shows the component changes that were made to the uridine nucleotide. The change to the middle molecule was that they swapped positions of a carbon and a nitrogen atom in the ring and moved a double bond. In the third molecule they added a methyl (H3C-) group to one nitrogen of the pyrimidine ring.
In general, if you can change the shape of a molecule, particularly with peptide or nucleotide polymer molecules, you will change the physical properties and the reactivity properties. The Psi nucleotide adds another hydrogen bonding group into the mRNA. These changes add up to lowering the immune response to the vaccine.
The other noteworthy aspect is the very short time it took to get vaccines on the market. This was only possible because decades of research in molecular biology continuously advanced the state of the art. The various funding agencies whose support of basic research over the long haul deserve thanks as well for the timely production of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.
We’ve been treated to unceasing wails of unfairness by #45 in relation to his mounting legal woes. It’s all politics, he proclaims, meant to disrupt his presidential campaign. I have to agree that politics are definitely involved- the politics of democracy and due process.
Democracy does not derive from some natural physical law. It is something that we allot to ourselves by consensus and the axiom of certain inalienable rights. In its purest form, democracy is a type of political structure focused on the will of the majority and the inherent rights of the individual. In our democracy, elected representatives put laws into place by consensus. Admittedly, it is sort of janky and prone to abuse. But, in the end, it always manages to right itself after a storm. In truth, our system of laws is inherently political by the definition below.
Politics, noun
pol·i·tics ˈpä-lə-ˌtiks
plural in form but singular or plural in construction
1a: the art or science of government
b: the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy
c: the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government
Our system of laws is subdivided into many areas. One of them specifies the layers of fair treatment by the judicial system. We call it “due process.” All of us are entitled to due process under the law, even ex-presidents.
In the course of due process, #45 has been indicted 4 times resulting in 91 felony counts. Did this result from political action? Yes indeed- the politics of democracy under the lawful guidelines of due process. Evidence of wrong-doing was presented to a grand jury of citizens 4 times and 4 times indictments were issued from 4 jurisdictions. “Mr. ex-President, this is what due process looks like. Yes, it is the politics of democracy you idiot.”
During a recent trip to Texas, I rented a car as one does. It was a 2023 Jeep something-or-other. What kind of Jeep? A white one. It turns out that I own and drive a 1998 Jeep Cherokee. Obviously, there have been continuous upgrades over the years. One of the “improvements” is the graphic user interface, GUI, controlling the radio, ventilation and navigation. Maybe some other things- I couldn’t tell. Annoyingly, the thing searches for your phone as soon as the car powers up and complains when it can’t make a connection. It’s the goddamned internet of everything slithering up around my ankles insisting on my attention.
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I have to say that I find the trend towards automotive graphic user interfaces quite annoying. Certain features that were once controlled by knobs or buttons are now controlled on the GUI. If you want to adjust the air conditioning while driving, there is no longer a knob to grab without taking your eyes off the road. A knob can be turned on bumpy roads without looking at it. A GUI requires that you make a precise finger contact with a screen and not have it slide around.
Auto manufacturers have known forever that car customers are like baboons when it comes to buying cars. Any shiny new thing on the vehicle will draw their attention and increase the odds of a sale. The GUI in a new car will attract customers like flies to a dung heap, they thought. The appeal of automotive modernism is a sure thing for car makers. It’s true.
The appearance of the GUI in automobiles was no doubt preceded by a highly focused sales campaign by the electronics industry. I can just see it. Conference rooms packed with C-suite executives watching slick presentations touting the inevitability of the automotive GUI and the excitement of customers swarming dealerships waving cash at the sales team. What a wondrous future it is that lies before us. How can we cram every bell and whistle into these blessed touch screens? How can we print money even faster?
I am making a stand here and now to keep the control knob and the button, well known by the ancients to be reliable and simple. So it was and so it shall be.
The GUI is something that I will resist until I move from being on the top of the grass to 6 feet below the grass. Ok, I guess I am being a Luddite here but I don’t care.
Sabine Hossenfelder has become a bit of a star. She has been producing a regular YouTube video called “Science without the gobbledygook.” She is presently a researcher at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. She is a quantum physicist and mathematician with 1 million YouTube subscribers. Her videos are about topical quantum and particle physics with some cosmology thrown in. She brings up issues under debate in the physics community. It is very interesting and thought provoking.
It turns out that she has a very dry wit which I for one appreciate. Every episode she’ll get a phone call from a red desk phone with a mock voice on the other side talking about some off the wall subject. Sometimes it is Elon Musk griping about something. The production value of her programming is quite good because she has people helping with that. It all adds up to something interesting and amusing for we sciency people.
My list of friends on Facebook includes several MAGA conspiracy fans. The big issue for many of them presently is Joe Biden and Hunter, the evil son. My observation has been that they use similar language in regard to their allegations about the “Biden Crime Syndicate.” This suggests to me that they are getting their “news” feed from the same types of sources. I’ve noticed that Faux News viewers tend to use vocabulary and ideas that they pick up on that miserable channel or one like it.
Close behind the hatred for Biden is considerable anger about the border and immigration.
My experience with conspiracy-minded folk has been that when you challenge them to cite evidence, they will just rearrange the words and say the same thing, only louder. I remember conversations with such people way back into the 1970’s. In 1975 I ran into a group at the county fair where the John Birch Society had a booth. They were an ultraconservative libertarian group and were, at the time, predicting the impending collapse of the dollar, carping about the demise of the gold standard and the wrong-headedness of liberalism. There was very much a survivalist tenor to the group. Beneath their calm exteriors they were rabidly anti-government and had a stack of doctrines and literature to back it up.
The recent Tea Party quickly gave way to the MAGA movement and was lubricated by the slippery QAnon … thing. Before, internet conspiracy enthusiasts could only recruit followers by phone calls, pamphleteering, talk shows after midnight from low power AM stations and local demonstrations. Day-to-day, the attention of big media is curated by editors and producers who monitor their broadcast news content. Some media organizations like Fox News make no effort to hide their political stripe. Generally, public events like marches or a gathering of a dozen extremists at the state capital were given minimal if any media coverage. Little coverage was given because few seemed to care, advertisers in particular. Media is all about attracting eyeballs.
The popularity of Trump with a great many Americans may be that he appeals to certain features of their inner dark sides. He hates the same people that they do. Distrust of foreigners, the need for retribution and vigorous disapproval of the gradual trend towards broader interpretations of civil rights. There is a notion that someone must pay dearly for their unlucky lot in life or their discomfort. Some fraction of people are by nature bitter and paranoid. Trump and his ilk validate their hatreds and fears.
The politicization of protestant Christianity has certainly fed into the belief that any variation from their supernatural world views are worse than out of line, they’re evil. The staunch belief in their own righteousness renewed weekly by dramatic performances of preachers in Sunday services leads such people to take a world view that they are backed by supernatural forces leading to the inevitable onset of prophesied and apocalyptic events. Many express the view that Trump is in place to bring on the end-times. Catch that? The supernatural realm penetrates space and time from somewhere else through the person of DJT. He’s part of the plan, man.
Trump could actually bring on something like end-times, only everywhere but the Levant and with no chance of a rapture.
In the last several decades, the rise of the internet and social media has given fringe-dwellers a powerful platform from which to broadcast their messages all over the world. This has been a step-change in political influence. Far-flung individuals and groups can now collaborate instantaneously with like-minded wierdos. This subsurface activity has changed how world politics is conducted. Whereas before, many people were not privy to political information because of income, location or social circle and thus were not involved. Now communications are limited only by the speed of the internet and anyone with a computer or phone can have a presence. We of the internet are like a nest of baby birds, all with open mouths pointed straight up clamoring for the worm of attention.
The internet step-change in communications is an improvement overall in democracy in the broad sense. More voices in play to contribute to democracy. But what has come along with it is the volume of shrill demagoguery and hysteria as well as new forms of criminal enterprise. We’re watching the effects of extremists frightening wide swaths of the public with exaggerated or fabricated troubles. Pre-internet this was done with organized rallies- a well-established technique of fascist dictators both as they rose to power and as they maintained power. Such rallies are popular today as well. Look at all of the rallies Trump held before, during and after his presidency. While he was anxiously lapping up the love and adoration from his crowds, he was also keeping the Trump enthusiasm in play. Trump may truly be an awful human being, but he is quite good at working a crowd anxious for his kind of message.
The US Energy Information Agency, EIA, has just released a new energy conversion relationship for the British thermal unit (Btu) and the kilowatt-hour (kWh). It is 3412 Btu/kWh.
On September 26, 2023, we released our primary report on recent and historical energy statistics, the Monthly Energy Review(MER). Beginning with the September 2023 MER, we have updated the way we calculate primary energy consumption of electricity generation from noncombustible renewable energy sources (solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal). We will now calculate consumption of noncombustible renewable energy for electricity generation using the captured energy approach, which applies a constant conversion factor of 3,412 British thermal units per kilowatthour (Btu/kWh), the heat content of electricity. This approach is a change from our current methodology, called the fossil fuel equivalency approach. The captured energy approach is more consistent with international energy statistics standards than the fossil fuel equivalency approach.
I post this kind of petroleum-related information with the hope that more people will pay attention to large-scale energy in general and oil & gas in particular. It is fashionable to pooh-pooh the petroleum sector for several reasons but, like it or not, it is one of the pillars of civilization. If we are going to be steering it in some particular direction, we should know a bit more about it.
There is a great deal of fascinating technology in oil & gas extraction and refining. The funny thing is that when you learn more about a subject, the more level your viewpoint on it will become, to the plus or minus side.
An article by Kevin Crowley, Bloomberg News, 9/23/23, reports that ExxonMobil Corp. has already begun to adapt to the decline in demand for gasoline and diesel as the switch to electric vehicles and renewable energy progresses. ExxonMobil operates the largest oil refining network in the world with 13 refineries presently in operation. It sold 5 refineries in the last 4 years in order to focus on cost cutting and improvements in performance of the highest performing facilities. ExxonMobil’s interest in refining dates back to the early days of its progenitor, Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller.
The oil majors are not blind and deaf to the swing towards the replacement of gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. In the case of ExxonMobil, they are planning on switching to production of petrochemical feedstocks in their refineries. They expect that their high-performance chemicals will see 7 % growth per year. Exxon believes the key to its success will be in chemical products. These chemicals are used in manufacturing of industrial and consumer products, from lubricants to pharmaceutical raw materials. Many of the ingredients you see in consumer products have their beginning as crude oil flowing out of the ground somewhere.
Colorado’s very own congressperson, the twice elected Rep. (R) Lauren Boebert of the 3rd Congressional District, was caught misbehaving during a theater presentation of Beetlejuice at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts the other day. Besides vaping and some very mild hooliganism, she was caught on surveillance video making out with her date. Like many others who have attended Beetlejuice, they couldn’t resist the urgent pull of their tingly bits. You may recall that Pee Wee Herman had a similar problem as well.
Let me emphasize that there is nothing wrong with making out, mind you. I know many who claim to have done this. After all, this was the true purpose of the drive-in movie theater in years past. Heaven only knows how many solid citizens walking around today were conceived at a drive-in. I think that the move away from bench seating in the automobile had a negative effect in this. But I digress.
Colorado’s 3rd District covers quite a bit of turf as you can see. Most of it is desiccated and somewhat vertical so the overall population density is low, thus the large size. A lot like Wyoming. There is a bit of agriculture but no real corn and soybean acreage like a proper farm state.
As with other western states, Colorado has a mix of folks of polar opposite politics who find themselves concentrated in separate zones. Running down the middle of the state is the majority of the population stretching from Ft. Collins to Colorado Springs. Nobody can decide if Pueblo is part of this corridor despite being on I-25. This is the urban corridor along interstate highway I-25 and west to the start of the Rocky Mountains. This band of settlement has for the last few election cycles voted majority Democrat and has driven state politics in the legislature and the governor’s office. Oh, and the House of Representatives and the Senate too. This includes the I-70 corridor running west halfway to Utah. There are scattered islands of liberalism like Durango smack in the middle of Boebert country. I feel for them- really, I do.
Some have tried to explain away Boebert’s behavior as being not uncommon for a refugee from that Fertile Crescent of sweaty redneck-ism, Florida. She is after all a pistol packin’ grandma at age 36 and close to being properly “deevorced.” Regardless of her background, she has lifted herself from the obscurity of the swamps to become a full-throated Centurion of MAGAstan. It is a real accomplishment.
America is now a place where audio and video tapes of titillating content starring national politicians will not lead to their downfall. Instead, they get an uptick in their popularity by rabid apologists who will make urgent whataboutism style counter-claims about Hunter’s laptop. MAGA folk cheer their politicians like people do at a professional wrestling match- with vigor and encouragement of more violence.
East of the I-25 corridor you soon encounter another conservative swatch of the state, border-to-border between two state panhandles- Nebraska and Oklahoma. This area has much more pivot irrigated farmland than in the western side of the state. Corn, wheat, and sugar beets are popular crops east of the interstate. Through what I suspect were underhanded dealings in the past, Oklahoma is said to have been paid to be a buffer between Colorado and Texas. Many will say that this was a smart move. (Relax- it’s a joke)
In Colorado we have two bookend corridor cities that are well known for their politics. Boulder, northwest of Denver, is to Colorado what San Francisco is to California, but without Silicon Valley or a suspension bridge. It is liberal progressive and a bit on the exotic side. The Hippie movement arrived in the 60’s and never faded away completely. In the 70’s and 80’s you could see ex-hippies with thinning gray ponytails tooling around town in their Beamers. No one bats an eye when weird news sprays out of there. It’s expected. Every state should have a Boulder. Look at Texas of all places- they have Austin.
Colorado Springs, on the other hand, is deeply entangled with far-right conservative Christian evangelicals. Add to this mix a large population of very conservative retired military and you have something very special. The city plays host to Fort Carson and the North American Air Defense Command, NORAD, deep within Cheyenne Mountain southwest of town. You can bet that the Russian and Chinese strategic commands have the exact coordinates of this facility. The US Air Force Academy resides in the forest north of town with its unique chapel jutting proudly above the landscape.
Located at the base of Pikes Peak, “The Springs” enjoys considerable scenic splendor and a conservative upper middle-class tenor. None of my liberal friends contemplate moving there no matter how splendiferous the place may be. It’s a cryin’ shame. This is the city where the wedding cake bakery went to the Supreme Court to protect their right to decline to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. They won. If I were a bakery owner who didn’t want to do business with someone, I would have given an outrageous price or a 12-month lead time or both with payment up front. There are easy yet subtle ways to poison an awkward business deal.
It will be interesting to see if Lauren gets reelected in 2024 given her antics. I have a nauseating feeling that she will be reelected given the demographics of her district. It’s one of those “she may be an idiot, but she’s OUR idiot” things that MAGAstan people can relate to. We’ll see.
The news cycle is presently focused on the meeting of Putin with a certain dictator of an impoverished nuclear state. Evidently, they agreed to hold hands against western imperialism and hegemony. That agreement just drips with irony about fighting imperialism. But it’s in the nature of dictators to claim to protect the state against the very thing they bring to their nations.
Having to stoop to sourcing arms and making nice with the waddling leader of the land of missiles and starvation must nauseate Putin in his reflective moments. But for now, he is tarting up the relationship as “statesmanship” with a former client state. Ok, maybe he’ll have to share secret rocket science technology and lessons in orbital mechanics with the tin-pot dictator of Asian Lilliput. Has to be done, I s’pose.
Over time, many of Russia’s institutions have been hollowed out to a husk by corruption and theft. Was this a symptom or a feature of Tsar Putin’s leadership? Maybe that is how you retain power- allow people to pilfer but rack-up debt to the leader.
At minimum, an influx of arms from what’s-his-name can only mean prolonging the Putin-Ukraine war. Putin’s people will do battle with garden tools if he so desires it. Ole Pootie-poot is just followin’ in the footsteps of Uncle Joe.
Lamentations on Chemistry 