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.
Former president #45 has proclaimed on his Truth Social post of 11/18/23 that 2024 will be” the final battle.” Below is a quote from him while in Iowa-
“2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL! ia.donaldjtrump.com/,” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday.
Many questions come to mind. Who is this political class that hates America? He continues to infer that liberals hate America, but where are these people? The people who hate the US are mostly elsewhere in the world.
What about his claim that he will cast out the Communists, Marxists and Fascists. Communism is practiced by China in some despotic form, but most of the world is free from the threat of communism. Marxism? Oh please. C’mon Donald, name 5 American Marxists. Marxism is long dead. The Soviets abandoned it and communism when the USSR collapsed in the early 1990’s. And fascism? Does he understand what fascism is? It doesn’t sound like it. Fascism is ultranationalism and who arms themselves to the teeth and parades around draped in the stars & stripes or the Confederate battle flag? It ain’t liberals.
The “Fake News Media”? #45 should be nicer to these people. They’ve given him half a billion dollars in free publicity since 2016. It’s helped the Democrats somewhat, but the media has been quite uncritical in their decisions on televising his rolling freakshow. His bombastic bellowing and verbal assaults make him a sure bet for good viewer numbers. He is a completely noxious human being but that makes him worth televising for ratings. The continuous reporting of his words and actions simply validates to his followers that he’s the right man to make Washington, DC, work right.
Many American conservatives are under the spell of #45 and are probably irretrievable. These people will have to live out their natural lives and go to the grave as Trump supporters. If you listen to them they are cock sure that Trump speaks the truth. But the fact is that the Republican party gets the most donations and most support from the people who have the money. And, right now that money is funneling into groups that support Trump because he has the numbers.
What doesn’t help America is that most of the fundamentalist, protestant Christian nationalists in the US can support Trump for religious reasons. They believe that somehow, despite his worldly troubles, he is the one who will spur on the prophesied return of Christ- the Second Coming. They believe that “the apocalypse” will happen in Israel and soon. Christian nationalists are eager to support Israel for reasons like this. Their end-of-the-world theology involves support for Israel.
The problem with Christian nationalism is that it stems from an apocalyptic religion. Why should anyone entrust them to govern America when they believe that the end is near? I’ve been watching this develop since the late 1970’s and especially into the 1980’s during the Reagan years and the rise of the Moral Majority. It was a chimera of orthodox Republicanism and protestant conservative evangelical organizations. The Southern Baptist Convention, in particular. This is a political force having its way in America presently. They are eating the elephant one bite at a time.
For myself, the fundamental theorem of Americanism is democracy, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Conservatives are beginning to discount the practice of democracy because they find it does not seem to provide a path to their utopian vision for America. Democracy is messy and allows for a broad spectrum of ideas and practices. A theocratic and libertarian world is a place where the control of civilization and power belongs to the wealthy and righteous. It is theocratic and controlled by a few. This is a regression to the closing decades of the American 19th century when industrial barons held sway.
In conclusion, this Republican Christian nationalism must be defeated or encouraged to die on the vine. Christianity or any other religion are not about democracy. The Republican party is showing little interest in democracy. They have learned that they cannot have their way just through elections. They are at work chipping away at our democratic institutions. Democracy must be preserved. The airwaves, churches and congress are full of doomsayers claiming that America is in a crisis and that only conservative Christian values can make it better. The spell of apocalyptic politics must be broken.
I was an elementary school student during the 1960s. In the Midwest where we lived the social climate was rather conservative and not especially contemplative. Rock-n-Roll music and race riots were not something that we cozied up to. Adults were generally uncomfortable with the Beatles and their long hair as well as the noisy “racket” they made on stage. Many adults were still spitting with rage at communists who were hiding behind every tree.
The Viet Nam war was raging in Southeast Asia and much of America bought into the Domino Principle cited by politicians. The John Wayne movieThe Green Berets was playing in theaters and it resonated with a great many Americans.
We watched Lawrence Welk and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom on the television which was broadcast out of Des Moines. It was the lovely Lennon Sisters on Saturday evening and all of the accordion you could stand followed by Wild Kingdom’sJim Fowler wrestling alligators on Sunday. They always had some ridiculous pretense for capturing the wildlife but we eagerly bought into it.
After the adventurous Wild Kingdom on Sunday was the congenial face and lilting voice of Walt Disney on The Wonderful World of Disney. Walt would always start the show with a few minutes of grandfatherly monologue introducing the show. When Walt spoke, all seemed right with the world, at least for a kid.
In the absence of travel or a more worldly family, this kind of TV programming expanded our knowledge of the outside world, albeit along some very narrow and artificial pathways. In those days the TV network censors were very strict and did not allow controversial or titillating content onto the airwaves. In some ways television propagated stereotypical behaviors and notions of social norms and in other ways it went past older norms and explored new ways of thinking. This is especially true with the advance of women’s rights.
In my world of the 1960s, women’s fashion was to evolve beyond the stodgier clothing of the 1950s. Dresses were giving way to pants, mini-skirts and short shorts. In those days, we were led to believe by puritanical adults that a slip showing below the hem of a dress was a social faux pas and worthy of a snicker.
But away from home in junior high school, things were changing. Most of the girls were experimenting with the new fashion and we boys were uniformly agog over it, though the teachers thought the girls were walking on the wild side.
By 9th grade, I had already been to a few house parties with black lights and fluorescent posters as well as painfully loud acid rock music blaring away. During this time I developed a taste for Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and classical music. Some kids were smoking tobacco and there were even open containers of beer scattered around. If there was pot smoking, I wouldn’t have recognized it even though marijuana plants were plentiful in the countryside. Just another weed to kill.
In 1972 I moved to another state and fell in with a different group of people in high school. Science nerds they were and electronics was the thing. Discrete components were just giving way to integrated circuits and you could buy chips at Radio Shack with AND, OR, NAND or NOR gates to build logic circuits. Still, discrete components like transistors, diodes, capacitors and resistors were yet in large-scale use.
During this time Bobby Fisher was playing Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, for the world chess championship. In high school at this time I actually started a chess club and we even played a tournament with another school. We got demolished 5 1/2 to 1/2. I scored the draw.
I can now understand the puzzlement my older relatives had with the way the newer generations are going. But, this is how the US has been in the 20th and into the 21st centuries. We’ve been riding a wave of great change since at least the revolutionary war and it is the birthright of each young person to explore the opportunities before them. Despite the grim looking global conflicts of today, we have much to look forward to. As someone famous said, we are standing on the shoulders of giants.
The current Israeli-Hamas conflict is difficult to fully appreciate. Being a secular humanist who speaks a different language in the middle of a distant continent, I’ll never get the full import of the situation in all of its confusion and misery. Like most others, I’m left with interpreting this hairball of violence secondhand from what I can read and view on video. My only personal connection is an Israeli colleague in Haifa who I am worried about. He is not a fan of Netanyahu at all. That whole political mess has been put aside for a while.
We westerners have recoiled from the abhorrent, murderous Hamas attack on October 7th. Such savage acts are beyond comprehension but are far from unprecedented in the world. The case for better treatment and a homeland for the Palestinians was set back years by the action of Hamas.
According to the Times of IsraelNetanyahu has supported Hamas with funds over the years with an eye on the long-term strategy of driving a wedge between Gaza and Hezbollah in the West Bank. How will he survive this?
The Times of Israel said that the Israeli military strategy is to destroy all of Hamas’ tunnels. The entrances to these tunnels are quite frequently in buildings and homes of noncombatant Gazans. One report shows the entrance to a tunnel below the floorboards in a child’s bedroom. This Hamas strategy seems to take advantage whatever lingering reluctance there may be of the IDF to bomb civilians. Innocent Palestinian casualties only works against Israel.
The US and Coalition forces ran into this blending-in with noncombatants in Afghanistan and Iraq. The French resistance in WWII and Viet Cong did this as well. It is a useful strategy for under-resourced forces. Hide in plain sight. At least there is the element of surprise working for them. But it only works if the attackers desire to avoid civilian casualties. Israel is on an aggressive war footing and concern for civilians is not at the top of the list.
While Hamas planned and executed a horrific act of mass-murder, the Israeli response of aggressively rooting out and killing every last Hamas member in Gaza continues to result in mass casualties of the general population. Evidently, there is little in Gaza that is immune from bombing. Hamas can huddle in their tunnels or blend into the civilian population. It’s a bug hunt. Hamas must have been fully aware that something like this would happen, yet they mass-murdered anyway. Was it part of a grand strategy or just an improved act of bloodlust?
The US and allies invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq soon after the 9/11 attack in the US. Whatever good we might have done was temporary and must be measured against the unanticipated consequences of an extended insurgency and urban warfare. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in these actions. To the Afghans and Iraqis, we were simply heathen invaders marauding through their countries, unwanted and despised, destroying their culture and economies. It was yet the latest imposition of westerners on their lands. Most Iraqis were grateful to see Saddam Hussein thrown out of power, but the insurgencies that followed quickly turned into deadly and prolonged urban warfare. Suicide bombing is alien to the western mind. These are smart bombs with blood and guts.
The October 7th attack was started by Hamas who claims to oppose Zionism but not Judaism. Hamas claims to represent the Palestinians. But Hamas is an arm of Islam by their very own charter. What it cannot devolve into is Judaism versus Islam, though I suspect that has been a fraction of it for a long time.
All that remains to be done by outsiders is to continue to persuade Israel to back off on civilian casualties and for them to plan for the state of post-war Gaza. The Gaza strip will be materially and psychologically devastated and the population has been in great need of assistance since this started. Any previous good-will of the Palestinians towards Israel will have vanished and be replaced with rage. The Levant will be a be an open sore for decades to come.
[Note: I changed the name of this post to something more suitable.]
Back in 1976 and a year out of high school I got a part time job at a single screen movie theater as a projectionist. The first movie I ran by myself was a Roman Polanski movie called The Tenant. It was the third in a trilogy of Polanski horror movies after Repulsionand Rosemary’s Baby. Both films had won critical acclaim. I can only assume this is why the owner of the local theater chain company booked it.
Over the stretch of 6 days we sold 7 tickets, of which 5 walked out during the show. One night we ran the movie for no one. The owner was watching this unfold and by the 7th day, we had a new movie to show. Low ticket sales also meant low concession sales. Minimal staff meant a manager to supervise and work ticket sales, a concessionaire, and a projectionist. On the bright side for the janitor, there was little to clean up.
Spoiler warning. The Tenant wasn’t a happy movie. There is a scene where the main character begins to take on the symptoms of madness that the previous tenant had. Eventually he throws himself out of his apartment window and survives like the previous tenant did. But, not one to easily give up he drags his broken body up the stairs to try again. The second attempt doesn’t work either. But that isn’t the end of it. You’ll have to see it.
My first theater had two of what were at the time relatively new 35 mm Norelco projectors. At this time theaters commonly used two 35 mm projectors sitting side by side in the darkened upstairs projection booth. Movies were shipped in one or more metal shipping containers in roughly 5 to 7 20-minute reels. Since the Norelco projector used 1-hour reels, three shipping reels were spliced head to tail and wound onto the larger reel. Usually there was only one changeover. We spliced in short preview clips on the first reel. This gave folks time to hear the movie begin and rush to their seats after getting concessions. When customers weren’t bitching about the price of popcorn, they would complain about the previews. We ignored them. That decision was way over our heads.
Older model Norelco projectors in a typical projection booth. Source: Norelco.
Two projectors were used to avoid interruptions between reels. Near the very end of a reel, a black spot would appear twice in the upper right-hand corner of the image. The first time was the signal to be sure the lamp was lit and to get the motor rolling on the other projector. Shortly after this was the second appearance of the black spot. This time it was the signal for the changeover. This was the cue to drop the dowser on the first projector and block the light while simultaneously opening the dowser on the other letting light through the next reel. At the same time the sound was shut off from the first projector and activated on the second projector. The result was smooth continuity of image and sound between reels.
At this point, the take-up reel was rewound and put away, ready for the next run. Leaving unrewound reels for the next guy was a major faux pas. Wash, rinse and repeat.
35 mm movies shipping reels. Source: ebay.
Most movies arrived on 5 to 7 reels in 2 or 3 shipping cans. The more common brand of projectors, Simplex 35’s, were designed to run the shipping-reel sized reels on the upper feed side directly. We’d use our own better-quality reels for use. The Simplex projectors came with carbon-arc lamphouses that required some attention when they were lit up.
A Simplex projector. It looks old because it is old.
Above is a common example of the Simplex 35 mm movie projector. It is comprised of a lamphouse, the upper feed reel, the intermittent movement and film gate, the spinning shutter, the optical sound pickup is below and slightly behind the image in time. The take-up reel is at the bottom. Between the shutter and the light is the dowser. There was one for manual use and later, one for automatic use. The purpose of these black pieces of thin metal was simply to block the light from getting to the gate where the film passed through. One reason is to avoid projecting an undesired image or white light onto the screen. It’s unprofessional and bad showmanship. The other reason is to prevent light getting to the film if the motor gives out and the film stops in the gate. Lamphouses generate considerable heat and a stationary piece of film will begin to melt within a second or two. Naturally, this fiasco will show up on the screen for God and everyone to see.
Inside view of the Simplex 35 carbon arc lamphouse.
The component in the center (above) of the housing held two copper-clad carbon rods which were slowly fed towards one another with one rod penetrating the mirror. The position of the rods was continuously moved towards the focal point as the rods burned up in the arc. Good ventilation was required. The purpose of the motion was to keep the size and shape of the arc constant and in the focal point of the parabolic mirror. Once the arc moved away from the focal point, the brightness of the projected image would diminish. If the gap between the rods became too long, the arc would wander around and become unstable causing flickering to appear on the movie screen. The arc lamp for our indoor theater used 70 to 80 amps DC. The high DC power was supplied by a vacuum tube rectifier. The projectors for our drive-in theater used 120 to 140 amps DC. Longer throw and larger screen.
Copper clad carbon rods for arc lighting in a movie projector.
The gate mechanism was interesting. At its heart was a Maltese cross intermittent movement. It would twist a sprocket enough to pull the film down by one frame and then leave it there for a short time. While stationary, the shutter blades would alternate letting light pass through and blocking it. The frame rate was 24 frames per second, but to prevent flickering, each frame is shown twice. While the shutter blocks the light, the gate mechanism pulls down the next frame.
The intermittent movement pulled the film through the “ gate” for steady projection.
The intermittent movement pulled the film through the film gate and stopped momentarily in time with the shutter. The purpose of the gate was to clamp the film stationary in the focal plane for a moment while the light passes through. It was built to hold the film firmly in place but not adversely affect the movement of the film or damage it. Movie prints are expensive and not always replaceable, especially if they are older. One side of the gate had two smooth, polished steel sliding surfaces for the film sprocket-hole sides to slide on and the opposite side had two flexible steel bands sitting over the polished slides to apply light pressure to the film to prevent chattering.
The gate also holds the aperture which determines the shape of the light beam giving the image on the screen. It is just a thin black metal plate that has a precise rectangular hole in it. The idea is to put image on as much of the screen as possible. Apertures are defined by their aspect ratio, or the ratio of length to width. The most common aspect ratios are the normal 1.85 to 1 and the anamorphic wide screen ratio of 2.39 to 1. We used to refer to the anamorphic image as “Cinemascope.” The 1.85 ratio works well both in cinema and television. Movie theater screens were adjustable in width by black curtains called “masking.” There were two positions for the masking- fully open for wide screen Cinemascope and partially closed for the regular format. Theaters could have used fully exposed screens like they do today, but the aesthetics then was to cover unused screen at that time. The 2.39 to 1 Cinemascope format works well in the theater but adjustments have to be made for it on television screens. They will either lop off the left and right sides and convert it to 1.85 to 1, or they will broadcast the movie in letterbox form, preserving the entire image, but making it smaller vertically on the TV screen.
Some theaters use curved screens but most do not. If you think about it, the distance of the film plane to a flat screen is minimum from the film to the center of the screen. This distance, however, increases from the center to the edges of the screen. So, it isn’t possible to focus the center and the edges simultaneously. In practice, the center of the screen is put in focus. A concave screen overcomes this problem. The larger the screen the more obvious the improvement in focus will appear.
Projecting a large image onto a large screen has certain problems to contend with. A large image from a 35 mm frame will magnify any imperfections in the image like graininess and focus but also you will come up against limits on brightness of the image. The image on the film should be what the director intended- perfect and usually it’s quite good. Focus is mostly a theater problem. Focus degrades with image size inherently but also with how well the operator can use the focus knob on the projector.
When a complaint came in about the focus, I would check it right away. Usually, the image on the screen was already at the optimum focus. To show the audience we were attending to the issue, I would crank it way out of focus, then back through focus and to the other extreme. Then I would then bring the image back into focus carefully, demonstrating that the image on the screen was as good as it could get. At one theater we had a 960-seat auditorium with a large, curved screen. The large size of the screen image came from a 35 mm piece of film meaning the magnification was very large. Focus and graininess were always an issue.
The anamorphic lens will take a distorted image from the film and spread it out to give a proper wide screen image. On TV they refer to these movies as letterbox movies due to the wide image but narrow height on a TV screen.
So, what’s the deal with the noise? Projectors make a characteristic clattering noise that isn’t always very quiet. The film is fed to the upper end of the gate at a constant speed, but the film has to stop every 24th of a second so a stable image can be shown twice. The film motion into and out of the gate area goes from constant-feed to intermittent-movement to constant feed-out. To do this, a loop of film is placed a above and below the gate forming two bits of slack in the film. The slack is alternately fed in and out and pulled in by the intermittent mechanism. It’s a bit noisy, but the customers never hear it. There might be other noise from the motors and gearing mechanisms as well.
Platter projection systems eventually came along with better automation for easier use by people with a broader job description in the movie house.
A single projector system with platters feeding and taking up film, No rewinding or changeovers. Source: Sprocket School.
The platter system came to our neck of the woods in the late 1970s. Our platters were air driven so they made a constant whining sound. The entire film was spliced together with heads in the middle and tales on the outside. One platter fed the film to the projector and a second one was the take-up platter. The film fed through a speed control mechanism in the center of the platter and then on to the projector. Out of the bottom of the projector, the film threaded through a speed controller and then rewound on the take-up platter. The third platter was a make-up platter for putting together the next movie. This system was not so good for the projectionist profession but did allow the theater to have a manager run the projectors and take care of everything in the lobby as well. I used to be a manager/projectionist at a duplex theater then later at a 4-plex theater while I was an undergraduate. If there was a power trip and the projectors dropped out, I would have 4 auditoriums of upset folks to content with. The house lights would automatically dim up so the crow could conveniently find their way out to complain. Lucky for me I was in one of the two projection booths getting the projectors running and away from the mob spilling out into the lobby. On the good side they usually bought concessions while pacing in the lobby.
When splicing film reels together it was convenient to mark the splice location along the edge so it could be seen wound onto the reel. We used white shoe polish to mark 2 ft of edge. When we were breaking down a print to ship out, unless there was a mark between reels, you could easily pass the splice as you were rewinding onto the shipping reels. We saved the head and tail leaders and spliced them back on for shipment. This was always done late Thursday night during and after the last show. Any previews had to be returned as well. Over time, movies came with previews attached.
Tape splicer for 35 mm movie prints. There is a cutter on the right side for getting clean, square edges, and a roll of tape at the splice point. We would overlap the splices by 1 sprocket hole for strength. Butt splices were prone to failure after too many flexures but did not show during projection. Both sides of the print were taped. Note the holes on the top part. Punches would come out when in use to punch out the sprocket holes. Image from ebay.
The film lab where prints are made would do lab splices when a new roll of stock was needed in the middle of a reel. These splices were overlapped about 1/2 a sprocket length and were either thermally fused or glued. Normally you never noticed them.
A “normal” movie print has one or two parallel optical soundtracks along one side that passes over the sound head. The sound head consisted of a lensed light source and a photodetector. The soundtrack(s) are black with variable transparent area that changes in proportion to the magnitude and frequency of the sound. Movies came with a single track early on and eventually changed to dual track stereo sound. In recent decades other schemes came along like Dolby sound and others. There are other sites where this is explained in more detail and with copy written graphics.
A 35mm movie print frame with dual soundtracks. The two soundtracks are different as you would expect stereo channels to be.
The Saturday Night fever Disaster.
On the opening Friday night ofSaturday Night Feverback in late 1977, I had just started the first showing. In the other theater, I started a sci-fi movie called Coma, written by Michael Crichton. Seeing that they were both running on our platter systems nicely, as manager/projectionist I had to attend to the lobby to check the ticket booth and grab some of the larger bills from the cash drawer and then the same at the concession stand. About 60 minutes later and into the third reel of Saturday Night Fever I went into the booth to check the projectors. Coma looked just fine. What I saw at the other projector floored me. I couldn’t believe it. Never had I dreamed that such a thing was possible.
What I saw was on the take-up platter of Saturday Night Fever. There was part of the film that was half gone across the film width. The film wound up smoothly as usual and the top surface looked smooth as it always did, except for maybe 80 % of a reel where the top half of the print was just gone! It looked like a gutter was gouged into the print. I looked everywhere in a panic for the missing film, many hundreds of feet of it, but it was not to be found anywhere. So I began to look closer at the print on the take-up platter. Where the next reel began (remember the shoe polish?), the layers of the film had a slightly different texture.
Feeling nauseated and incredulous all at once that I had destroyed a print of a blockbuster movie that people were dying to see during the very first showing, I stopped the projector, refunded 210 very hacked-off customers and halted sales for the next show. Turns out this was not really necessary but I did it in panic. Then I called the owner of the theater and explained what had happened. He was already pissed about something- taxes maybe- so my news just threw gasoline on the fire.
While he was on the way, I began to sort out what had happened. By the next day when I very laboriously removed the print, and instantly say what had happened. Early into reel 2 a lab splice had torn halfway across the width of the print, then down the middle for 80 % of the reel. It only stopped when it came to my tape splice between reels 2 and 3. So, this 80 % of reel two had piled onto the floor then at the beginning of reel 3 began to be pulled off the floor and onto the take-up platter where it neatly rolled up between layers of reel 3. Because it was from the top of reel 2 and layered along the top of reel 3, it wasn’t easily visible. Nobody had heard of such a failure before. Usually a print tore completely across and the projector automatically shut down.
The Simplex 35 platter projectors we had were equipped with a failsafe feature below the sound head. By this time, projectors had long had failsafe mechanisms, but they only detected tension in the film. This device did two things- it detected broken film and it detected a thin piece of conductive tape along the edge that would signal the automation to close the dowser and shut off the lamp to block the light, shut off the sound, dim up the background music (Neil Diamond, usually), signal the house lights to dim up, reset the masking curtains, and close the main curtains in front of the screen. The sensor consisted of two curved paddles that sat in the film path and across and against the film as it left the projector below the sound head. The stationary paddle picked up the shut-down metal tape that triggered the automation and the other spring-loaded paddle sensed the loss of film coming out of the projector. But it only sensed the presence of one side of the film. If the other side was somehow missing, there would be no film breakage detected. And that’s what happened.
The big problem was that we had an empty screen and needed a movie to throw on it. All 1400 of the Saturday Night Fever prints were in use across the world. There were no more, or so we were told. What we did to keep butts in seats was to show one print in 2 theaters simultaneously. Both projectors had Selsyn motors that would cause the two projectors run synchronously without creating or losing slack in the print between projectors. We called it “running in synch”. So, for 6 days we ran Coma on both screens. The cast included Geneviève Bujold, Michael Douglas, Elizabeth Ashley, Richard Widmark, and Rip Torn. Among the actors in smaller roles were Tom Selleck, Lois Chiles, and Ed Harris. It was pretty good.
There is an old saying that goes “necessity is the mother of invention.” Its meaning is obvious. It says that when you run into a problem, you can invent your way around it. Or at least try to. The other solution to a problem is simply to live with it.
I recall that during the Apollo project in the late 1960’s, many conservatives would complain about the cost of going to the moon. Social progressives likewise made a complaint that was directed at shifting those NASA funds to social programs here on earth. Technology progressives would retort that it is worth it because of all of the spin-offs that were appearing out of the effort. The reply to this was that if you wanted some shiny new widget, just invent it. You don’t have to go to the moon.
Presently I can look back at the two major research domains, academic and industrial, and make comparisons. In academia, a professor’s work product is split between research, teaching and service to the school. Research is commonly measured by the number of papers published, especially in the prestigious journals. In some institutions, patenting is also taken into account. As for teaching, there are student evaluations and performance reviews by the department chair or the dean. This includes past performance in committees. A motivation in the first few years is to get tenure. Academic research includes putting research results in the public literature for all to use.
In business there is “technology push” or “market pull.” Technology push means that you want a market to grow around your product or service. It will require some customers to be early adopters of first-generation product. Not everyone is eager to do this. Market pull, by contrast, means entering an existing market with your particular version of a product. Price and service are especially important in known-product sales.
So, what about the mother of invention? Generally, in chemistry an invention comes from some kind of investigative activity, curiosity or need. Sometimes you may want to invent around an active patent rather than go into a licensing agreement.
The US patent office allows only one invention per application. If you choose, you can lop off your other invention and file it separately as a divisional patent. You would do this because the patent examiner will have raised an objection to your original filing. Doing a divisional filing allows you to use content from the first, or parent, patent application and you get the filing date of the parent as well. Early filing dates are very important.
Sometimes patents are written very narrowly and leave “white space” or potential claims around them. This is not always desirable so the matter can be solved by the use of “picket fence patents.” You patent your core art as broadly as the patent office will allow, then you file for patents that cover related art that a competitor could conceivably patent that would allow them to compete against you. By raising the cost of entry into your market or narrowing the scope of new art, you can dissuade competitors from entry or at least make them pay a heavy price for it. Who knows, maybe they’ll decide to buy a license from you or even an entire patent. An argument against picket fence patenting is that patents can be very expensive.
Academic research has a high reliance on external funding. This requires that the funding organization recognizes the novelty and p[otential intellectual value of the research proposal. Industrial research has a high reliance on market potential of an invention. What is the breakeven time and sales potential of the invention? Will demand last long enough for the invention to provide a healthy return on investment?
Academics can and do patent their work on occasion, especially if the university pays for it. The thing I object to is that a great deal of research is paid for by the taxpayers. We pay for the research and then it gets patented and its use is restricted for 20 years. Maybe taxpayers (businesses) can enter into a licensing agreement, but maybe someone else has bought exclusive rights. Licenses can be somewhere between reasonable to absurdly restrictive, depending on the terms of the agreement. Many will want to add an extra fee based on the sales income of the product. This means that there will be an annual audit with pencil neck auditors poking around your business. It’s like having a ferret in your shorts. Avoid if at all possible.
But, many companies leverage their output through licensing agreements of technology they have no interest in developing.
Industrial research is quite different in terms of administration of the endeavor. Industrial chemists are supervised by an R&D director and use in-house technology and science and/or what they learned in college, but here the results are aimed at producing something for sale or improving the profit margin of a process. There is no desire to share information. Industrial research produces in-house expertise as well as, hopefully, patentable inventions. Industrial invention can be driven by competition in existing markets or by expansion into something entirely new. Often it is to provide continuous margin growth if market expansion is slow.
The argument can be made to keep everything as a trade secret. Publishing your art in the patent literature can help competitors have their own brainstorms about the subject, or some may even be tempted to infringe on your art that is carefully laid out in front of their eyes. Competitors may be cued into a new product’s capabilities and gives insight into new products.
Both academic and industrial chemists invent. The difference is that in industry some inventions or art are held in trade secrecy, even if they never get commercialized. Academic researchers can and do keep secrets when they are aiming for a patent, at least until the patent is granted. Compartmentalization in a research group is critical, since disputes about inventorship can kill a patent. Once issued, academics will publish as many papers about the patented art as possible. Commonly, patents are assigned to whoever pays for it- usually an organization. An academic patent is assigned to the inventor’s institution while in industry the company is the assignee. In both cases the inventor is usually awarded only a token of appreciation and the “satisfaction” of having a patent.
So, what about “necessity is the mother of invention”? There are some inventive projects that are too large or risky for a business or even a consortium of businesses to handle. I’m thinking of the Apollo Moon Landing program. The project required the resources of a government. A great deal of invention by many players allowed the moon landing to happen. The necessity for all of this invention was that the US government set a goal and farmed out thousands of contracts with vendors to make it happen. Much wealth was spread around into the coffers of industry, but with contracts having stringent specifications for man-rated spaceflight and tight timelines to be met.
That’s one of the values of having a government like we had in the 1960’s. They created the necessity and private industry made it happen. Despite the cultural upset of the 1960’s and the Viet Nam war, the Apollo Project worked. No astronauts died in space. This necessity/invention pressure does work.
This is an updated re-release of an old post from Dec 10, 2010. I have applied a bit of polish and a spit shine, but not much. Since I wrote this, political correctness has morphed into wokeness.
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I keep hearing comments by conservative people who are obsessed by what they call political correctness. In these commentaries, some kind of sarcastic parody is made regarding an alleged trend to ban the use of the phrase “Merry Christmas”. Neoconservatives latch onto this like barnacles on the bottom of a tramp steamer. Inside their heads they imagine that a cabal of liberals are scheming to take their guns and their religion from them.
At the most recent liberal cabal meeting, we decided to let the gun owners keep their damned guns. There was a vote, however, where a proposal was made to require gun owners to take turns cleaning up the blood and guts after a shooting and to pick up the funeral costs.
Ok, that was a joke. Actually, we voted on something else.
If other liberals are like me, then not only do we not want to deprive them of their damned firearms and religion, minimally we would simply like to be out of shooting range.
Christmas has a secular component and practice that even a bitter, crusty, non-religious liberal like myself can feel comfortable with. But as far as possible insensitivity to Christians, they’ll just have to get over it.
In my limited sphere I don’t know of a single liberal who is trying to replace “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays”. The only time I hear of it is when a conservative repeats it sarcastically as a token of disapproval. Only conservatives carp about this. It’s a red herring promulgated by that famous dead yapping cur himself, Rush whatshisname, in the name of ratings.
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I’m moved to comment on what makes some people liberal. A recent article in Slate was written by a conservative, Daniel Sarewitz, who seems to be genuinely perplexed at the apparent trend of scientists, or at least academics in general, to be liberal. It is though he is talking about a smallpox epidemic. While I have no idea as to the conservative/liberal ratio of scientists and academics, I can say that from my perch on a small and obscure branch of the tree of science, scientists tend to be overall a bit left leaning. However, make no mistake, there are plenty of conservatives in the group as well.
Indeed, many of the industrial chemists I am in contact with are libertarians, religious conservatives or just plain-vanilla orthodox conservatives. So, from my limited data set, Sarewitz’s complaint appears a little specious to me.
He probably refers to the life and eco-sciences, earth science, astronomy, big-time-physics, etc. I suspect that the balance is different in these fields.
But why would scientists trend towards a liberal viewpoint? I have some ideas. First, the scientific approach to the world relies on study, measurement and analysis. Scientists tend to study analytically or, to use another term, critically. Critical study of the physical world requires a willing suspension of belief. A formal education in science takes the student through many, many opportunities to see how scientific knowledge was acquired by successive approximations and sometimes led into fruitless cul-de-sacs. A scientist must keep a loose grip on theoretical viewpoints because experimental results frequently contradict fundamental assumptions. Fame and glory in science goes to those who tip over the apple cart of concepts and theories. All scientists are excited at the prospect of looking at something in a new way or bringing a puzzle into sharper focus.
“But, it’s just a theory …” I hear this ignorant comment frequently. A theory is just a model of a particular aspect of reality that is then strengthened or weakened by experiment. It is not uncommon for theories to be tossed aside in the junk pile when data or a better theory comes along. Science advances by successive approximation. One does not “believe in” a theory. It is not a “devotional” thing. You agree with it to some extent or you dispute its accuracy. It’s an “analytical” thing. A theory does not have to be completely accurate to be useful. Even a faulty theory may provide certain perspectives that are useful.
Many conservatives whom I know also appreciate study and measurement. Numbers people are greatly influenced by numerical data regardless of their political stripe. But in the religious realm there is often a trend towards devotional study rather than critical study. Devotional study is about finding a greater understanding of doctrine or greater fidelity with a catechism of beliefs.
Religionists upset with the notion of the separation of church and state often assert their right to be heard and to express their religiosity in public spaces. Some might take this as a simple matter of freedom of speech. And if that is all the religionists want, that would be fine. But if you look closely, they don’t want just speech, often times they want government endorsement of their doctrine. They want equal time in the public schools. They want to bring the civil sphere into alignment with their beliefs. “Go ahead and teach Darwinian evolution, but Creationism should get equal time.” Creationism is just a Christian conservative flavor of denialism. It is the denial of evidence in favor of a magical world of spirits and things that cannot be physically evaluated.
Religious services are about the veneration of the sacred. The word “sacred” means that which is beyond question or understanding. In a real sense, holding something sacred is to set apart a concept or doctrine from critical analysis. Religionists are not interested in a public critical analysis of their precepts. They are interested in broader devotional coverage, i.e., the fruits of evangelism.
It isn’t unusual for a liberal person to be compelled to do critical analysis of their basic beliefs over a lifetime. The very notion of spiritual sacredness is antithetical to one who seeks analytical truth. The policy that some belief systems are beyond analysis is simply a form of thought control and is more suited to the iron age than the present. Being a nontheist I hold human life sacred. I’m very partial to kindness too. But this does not require that I believe in a supernatural universe.
For a great many people, college is a time and a place for intellectual experimentation and exploration. It is a place where you can have chance or purposeful encounters with new ideas, people and careers that were beyond your previous horizon. The university is an institution where critical analysis of the great world systems takes place. The active examination and betterment of our world is the realm enjoyed by the progressive. Progressives push the boundaries of knowledge and thought. Sometimes focused analysis reflects well on our human or national institutions and sometimes it does not. But knowledge hidden is knowledge abused. That universities are loaded with liberals is a natural outcome of the youthful intellectual adventure the students are taking. It is a journey of discovery of the self and one’s place in it. It can be both joyous and a bit disappointing. New lands and new boundaries are there to be found.
The current efforts by American conservative Christian nationalists to scour out all traces of liberalism in education is worrisome and frankly, a little stupid. The assault on New College by the governor of Florida is a dark example of state government taking a giant step backwards by imposing one-sided political controls on a public resource. This in itself shows that American education has failed a great many people. America has generally failed in citizen’s knowledge and practice of civics and the long, troubled path of history to the present.
Just take a long look at the MAGA movement. Make America Great Again. When was this actually? If you look below the surface in any period of US history, you’ll find political problems and upheavals galore. There have always been social struggles in our history. Formerly venerated American Heros like Buffalo Bill Cody and the near extinction of the buffalo. General Custer and what he was really doing at the little Bighorn. Or the revered westward expansion with the Gold Rush and migration of the pioneers which were part of our celebrated manifest destiny. These were national enthusiasms that have been endlessly celebrated and woven into textbooks for generations of school kids.
The ugly truth to much of the actions of our ancestors is that a great many innocent people died as settlers began to occupy North America. Land was stolen, European diseases were spread, native Americans were murdered and robbed of their land and resources and their children were reprogrammed in government schools. Survivors were herded into reservations with little in the way of amenities or natural resources that we take for granted. Treaties were made and broken. This is also part of our history.
There is no benefit in self-flagellating ourselves over the sins of the past. However, what we need to do is to take note of the mistakes of the past and steer a better path to the future.
Do I believe that American conservative thinking and liberal thinking are equally right? Not at all. I’ll take progressive liberalism any day.
According to the International Energy Agency, IEA, the current wave of oil refining capacity growth is likely to be the last of it. IEA is forecasting that beyond 2030 global refining capacity growth will begin to recede. The latest World Outlook Report forecasts that global capacity will see 105.2 million b/d and by 2050 growth be tapering off to 105.8 million b/d. This is from 102.7 million b/d in 2022.
Remember, this is receding growth overall, not receding consumption overall. IEA expects North America to see reducing refinery capacity on the order of 1.4 % between 2022 and 2030. To meet emission reduction goals, North American capacity will have to reduce by 7.5 % from 2022 to 2030. By contrast, under current policies India is expected to see an increase in refining capacity from 7.2 to 7.5 milling b/d by 2050.
The Age of Petroleum is approaching a production plateau as the oxidation of hydrocarbons gives way to harnessing the reduction potential of metallic lithium. Oh, what a time we’ll have! Think of all of the new failure modes we’ll discover.
On top of all of the current challenges to fire departments, there is a new one. Source: Battery Fires.
So, I get an email from Amazon promoting its “Decarboxylator” product. The Amazon page shows a picture describing the device and shows a picture of someone loading it with spinach leaves. The title of the page says “Decarboxylator Machine to Make Butter, Oil, and More“. A link to ecru, the seller, extols the virtue of herb consumption for greater wellness. The device obviously is just a heated container with digital thermometer and temperature setpoint adjustment.
Source: Amazon.com. One version of the home decarboxylator.
Why bring this up? This was sent to me as an Amazon customer, but I also happen to be an organic chemist who knows about decarboxylation generally. Or, just maybe they know that already?? What on Earth is retail decarboxylation about I wondered. Well, a simple Google search immediately turns up the answer. Processing weed for use in edibles. The silly allusions to vegetable processing is just a ruse.
The decarboxylation of THCA-A to give THC. Graphics: Silly old me.
Apparently, there are two isomers of tetrahydrocannabinolic acid, THCA. They are THCA-A and THCA-B. THCA-A is present is large quantities in unprocessed marijuana. THCA-A is the direct precursor of THC in the plant. When you smoke weed or bake it into brownies the burning or baking process decarboxylates THCA-A giving the psychoactive product, THC. However, when you extract weed with a solvent without heating, the decarboxylation is very slow and affords reduced potency. Weed for edibles must be heat treated to induce decarboxylation for maximum potency. The Wikipedia page on tetrahydrocannabinolic acid is very informative. The THCA-A precursor has its own pharmacological effects which is interesting in itself, but that is for another day.
This handy-dandy whizbang device does the deed for home producers of edibles. Ain’t it grand?
This is a reprint of an October 25, 2010, piece that I wrote about illumination with flames. I did tweak the title a bit for the sake of accuracy. -Th’ Gaussling
Until the invention of the electric lamp, the illumination of living and working space was very much the result of sunlight or of combustion. Since the development of fire making skills in prehistoric times, the combustion of plant matter, fossil fuels, or animal fat was the only source of lighting available to those who wanted to illuminate the dark spaces in their lives.
From ancient times people had to rely on flames to throw heat and an agreeable yellowish light over reasonable distances. A good deal of technology evolved here and there to optimally capture the heat of combustion to do useful work (stoves, furnaces, and boilers) from readily available fuels.
Lighting technology also evolved to maximally produce illumination from flame. High energy density fuels that offered a measure of convenience for lamp users evolved as well. Liquid fuels like vegetable oils, various nut oils, whale oil and kerosene could flow to the site of combustion and were in some measure controllable for variable output. The simple wick is just such a “conveyance and metering device” for the control of a lamp flame. Liquid fuels flow along the length of a wick by capillary action to a combustion zone whose size was variable by simple manipulation of the exposed wick surface area.
The first reported claim of the destructive distillation of coal was in 1726 by Dr Stephen Hales in England. Hales records that a substantial quantity of “air” was obtained from the distillation of Newcastle coal. It is possible that condensable components were generated, but Hales did not make arrangements to collect them. Sixty years earlier an account of a coal mine fire from flammable coal gases (firedamp) highlighted the dangerous association of coal with volatiles. So, flammable “air’ was associated with coal for some time.
By 1826 a few chemists and engineers were examining the use of combustable gases for illumination. The historical record reveals two types of flammable gas that were derived from coal- coal gas and water-gas. Both gases came from the heating of coal, but under different conditions. Coal gas was the result of high temperature treatment of coal in reducing conditions. It is a form of destructive distillation where available volatiles are released. Depending on the temperature, there was the possibility of pyrolytic cracking of heavies to lights as well.
Water-gas was the result of the contact of steam with red hot coal or coke. The water dissociates into H2 and CO. Water gas is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, both of which are combustible. The formation of water-gas is reported to have been discovered by Felice Fontana in 1780.
One of the properties of burning coal gas or water-gas was the notably meager output of light from the flame. Workers like Michael Faraday and others noted that these new coal derived gases provided feeble illumination, but if other carbonaceous materials could be entrained, then a brighter flame could result. It was during the course of investigations on illumination with carburized water-gas that Faraday discovered bicarburet of hydrogen, or benzene.
About this time, an engineer named Donovan also noted that if other carbonaceous materials were to be entrained into water-gas, then the light output was enhanced. So, in 1830, engineer Donovan installed a “carburetted” water-gas lighting system for a short run in Dublin.
Coal gas was first exploited for lighting by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch. Murdoch began his experiments in 1792 while working for Watt and Boulton in England. By the late 1790’s, Murdoch was commercially producing coal gas lighting systems. His home was the first to be lit with coal gas.
The carburization of water gas eventually became an established industry in America in the second half of the 19th century. The treatment of gases, especially with the discovery of natural gas in Ohio, increased the commercial viability of lighting with gas. Carburization of water gas was aided by the discovery of hydrocarbon cracking to afford light components that could be used for this purpose.
Thorium is frequently found in the ores of rare earth elements (REE) and the connection of REE’s to the issue of illumination begins in the laboratories of Berzelius in about 1825. Berzelius had observed that when thoria and zirconia were heated in non-luminous flames, the metal oxides glowed intensely. But this was not a new phenomenon. Substances like lime, magnesia, alumina, and zinc oxide were known to produce a similar effect. Goldsworthy Gurney had developed the mechanism of the Limelight a few years before. In the limelight, a hydrogen-oxygen flame played on a piece of lime (calcium oxide) to produce a brilliant white glow. This effect was soon developed by Drummond to produce a working lamp for surveying.
The work of Berzelius was an important step in the development of enhanced flame illumination. He had extended the range of known incandescent oxides to include those that would eventually form the basis of the incandescent mantle industry. Thoria (mp 3300 C) and zirconia (mp 2715 C) are refractory metal oxides that retain mechanical integrity at very high temperature. This is a key attribute for commercial feasibility.
Numerous forms of incandescent illumination enhancements were tried in the middle 19th century. Platinum wire had the property of glowing intensely in non-luminous flames. But platinum was not robust enough for extended use and was quite rare and consequently very expensive. By 1885, a PhD chemist named Carl Auer von Welsbach patented an incandescent mantle which was to take the gas light industry to a new level of performance. Welsbach studied under professor Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg.
Welsbach fashioned the incandescent mantle into the form that is familiar to anyone today who has used a Coleman lantern. The original mantle was comprised of a small cellulose nitrate bag that had been impregnated with magnesium oxide, lanthanum oxide, and yttrium oxide in the ratio of 60:20:20. The mantle gave off a greenish light and was not very popular.
By 1890, Welsbach produced an improved incandescent mantle containing thoria and ceria in a ratio of 99:1. This mantle emitted a much whiter light and was very successful. Many combinations of zirconia, thoria, and REE metal oxides were tried owing to their refractory nature, but the combination of thoria-ceria at the ratio of 99:1 was enduring.
Welsbach made another contribution to the commercialization of REEs. Welsbach had experimented with mischmetal and was interested in its pyrophoric nature. He had determined that a mixture of mischmetal and iron, called ferrocerium, when struck or pulled across a rough surface, afforded sparks. In 1903 Welsbach patented what we now call the flint. In 1907 he founded Treibacher Chemische Werke GesmbH. Today Treibacher is one of the leading REE suppliers in the world.
Here in Colorado, we were located north of the totality band in the partial annular eclipse region that swept across the US last week. I’ve seen annular eclipses previously so it was a been-there-done-that event for me. Below is a great photograph from NASA showing the eclipse from the DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory), a satellite jointly operated by USAF, NASA and NOAA. This satellite is in a non-repeating Lissajous orbit at the Lagrange point L1 about 1.6 million kilometers from Earth. It has also been called a looping halo orbit. At this location, it has a perpetual fully illuminated view of the Earth which rotates below it. The exception would be when the moon is in this part of its orbit.
The probe carries numerous sensors to allow measurements of the earth and space environments.
Source: NASA October 14, 2023 Annular eclipse. It is the dark spot on North America.
The band of totality stretched across the southwestern states October 14, 2023.
Source: NASA. Path of the annular eclipse totality.
Lagrange points arise from two large masses in gravitational proximity, in this case the sun and the Earth. Relative to the two large masses the 5 Lagrange points allow for stable “parking orbits” for small objects like a satellite. Objects are placed in orbit around the Lagrange points to remain roughly stationary in relation to the Earth-Sun system.
Source: Jordi Carlos, García García, Universitat Politecnica Catalunya, 2009. A three-dimensional view of the simulated Lissajous-type orbit of the Gaia probe about L2.
According to Wikipedia, a Lissajous orbit differs from a halo orbit in that it is quasi-periodic and dynamically unstable, needing occasional station-keeping actions by the probe. A halo orbit about a Lagrange point is described as a periodic, 3-dimensional orbit.
The history of the probe is a bit odd. It was launched by SpaceX on a Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle on 11 February 2015, from Cape Canaveral. DSCOVR, initially called Triana after Rodrigo de Triana, the first European explorer to see the Americas. The mission began as a proposal by Vice President Al Gore in 1998 as a whole earth observatory at the L1 point. The probe’s mission was put on hold by the Bush Administration in January 2001 and officially terminated by NASA in 2005. The probe was placed in nitrogen blanketed storage until it was again funded, then removed and tested for viability in November 2008. The Obama Administration funded it for refurbishment in 2009 and the mission was fully funded by 2012. The Air Force allocated funds in 2012 for its launch and awarded SpaceX the contract. On February 11, 2015, the probe was finally launched from Cape Canaveral, FL. Management of DSCOVR is provided by NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center.
The NISTAR instrument on board the DSCOVR probe was provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST. NISTAR is a 4-band cavity radiometer and is located as shown below in orange. It measures reflected and emitted light in the infrared, visible and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum. The instrument is able to separate reflected light from Earth’s radiant emissions.
Source: NASA, Steve Lorentz, Allan Smith, Yinan Yu, L1 Standards and Technology, Inc. Graph showing the parts of the spectrum where reflected and emitted radiation from Earth is to be found.
The Faraday Cup (FC) is a sensor that collects and quantifies the flux of positively charged particles in the solar wind, i.e., protons and helium nuclei. Variations in the solar wind speed are observed. In the course of operation they discovered that the solar wind is “colder” than was previously thought in terms of what is referred to as “thermal speed.” The researchers presented thermal speed numbers on the order of 300 to 500 km/sec.
Source: NASA. The faraday cup on board DSCOVR. Source: NASA. The imaging camera- Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC). Sorry about the tiny print size.
1SciGlob Instruments & Services LLC, Elkridge, MD, United States
2Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, Greenbelt, MD, United States
3LuftBlick, Innsbruck, Austria
4Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Lanham, MD, United States
5Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, Baltimore, MD, United States
The probe has a 420 kg dry mass and its solar panels provided an initial 600 watts at 28 volts. The probe attitude and translational motion is managed with a set of 4 reaction wheels and 10 hydrazine thrusters. The hydrazine, N2H4, monopropellant is decomposed over a bed of catalyst prior to ejection. This decomposition yields hot N2, H2 and NH3 gases.
Like many satellites, DSCOVR uses reaction wheels for attitude control. Of the 4 reaction wheels, 3 are for axis-control and the 4th is used as a spare. Each wheel is driven by an electric motor. When the angular velocity of a single reaction wheel changes, there is a proportional counter rotation, resulting in a change in attitude about that 1 axis. Since the wheel velocity can be precisely controlled by the electric motor, fine adjustments in attitude can be attained.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
