Author Archives: gaussling

About gaussling

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.

The Innate Appeal of Fear

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I wrote a post a few years ago about a form of social reconstructionism that I recognized as a rebirth or perhaps, a reinvigoration, of the John Birch Society philosophy in American politics. I have noticed of late that others are making this connection as well. 

With the ascendancy of the confederate vaudevillians Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as well as the Tea Party, Bircher political philosophy is being rediscovered.  Only, I’m certain that few of its new adherents have realized it has a name and is a 50’s cold war relic.  With scholars like Glenn Beck delivering lectures from his Fox TV lecture hall, the Tea Bag side is busily manufacturing consent by doing what preachers have done for a long time. By preaching that our society is in collapse and that the only way out of the impending disaster is to follow their recommendation.  This might be manifested as a more rigid adherence to teaching, or as has happened since the 1980’s, greater assertion of influence in political and social reconstruction. 

The Sky is Falling!!  -C. Little

There is a certain innate appeal to Bircher Philosophy that satisfies the inner fascist in all of us.  It is a manner of thought that feeds directly and almost unfiltered from the fear cortex of the brainstem. When uncertain, be afraid. No need for thoughtful analysis, just reject the unfamiliar. Distrust everything.  If it ain’t ‘Merican, then it ain’t no damned good. Study these principles devotionally, not analytically.

Bircher doctine serves as a political glove over the hand of protestant Christian evangelical fundamentalists who seek to de-secularize American culture, which includes government and the public arena.  They see our country as an errant Christian state taken off-track and into a condition of fallen righteousness by elitist liberal intellectuals bent on some kind of social buggery.  Listening to these folks, it would seem that they are engaged in a great battle between the forces of Heaven and the liberal leather-winged angels of darkness.  I think they have been watching too many Cecil B. DeMille movies.

Running a secular democratic state like the USA is hard to do. At least some citizens will demand an explanation for any given decision.  And they’ll want to argue. But a state run according to some religious conservative principles, well, that’s different.  Iron age justice is swift and harsh.  And how do the leaders know what to do? God came to them and expressed His conservative wishes. See, isn’t that so much easier? None of this ambiguity. It’s all so easy to understand.

I do agree with the conservative side in one way. The federal government is just too large and over reaching. But killing it while the citizens sleep is not the answer.  Neither is replacing it with market-style dynamics or reverting into a Confederate States of America.  The American experiment does not reduce to just a market phenomenon and was not kept running exclusively by righteous church-going people.  It does not reduce to a mere extension of the principles of the founding fathers either. It is all of that and much more.

It is the result of hundreds of millions of hard working, clever people who were born or naturalized into an enabled society without having to adopt narrow doctrines on how to think or without impermeable social strata. The American phenomenon is an artifact of the bell curve. It is the expression of a statistical distribution of individuals making a contribution to the betterment of our society by improving their own lot.  All citizens have the right to think as they please and we do not need conservative clowns to rally the dark side in all of us so that they can achieve their personal needs.

Some Realities of Modern Placer Gold Mining

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Yesterday was spent doing set construction for our upcoming production of You Can’t Take it With You. The spouse of one of the actors is a gold miner and a pretty fair carpenter.  He returned early from a placer mining expedition this summer west of Dawson, YT, Canada, across the border on the US side.

My acquaintance- we’ll call him “Ted” because of confidentiality- was a bit reluctant to discuss the recent expedition only because he felt his part in the thing was minor. In fact, his comments were very telling of the kinds of hardships facing anyone with a fancy for placer mining in Alaska or the Yukon Terrritory.

Ted has plenty of experience in placer mining in Colorado, especially in the Fairplay region west of Denver.  Placer mining has a special appeal to those who want to mine for gold, but don’t want the grief and expense of underground mining of chemically complex ores.

Ted signed up to work for a New Zealand miner who had a sizeable claim an hour outside of Boundary, AK, along the Top of the World Highway. This site is reasonably remote, judging by the fact the nearest city where machine parts could be obtained was Dawson, across the border in Canada. Mining season is 100 days in duration, or 2400 hours. This is because of the climate and the hardships associated with work out in the bush. 

The gold bearing formation is a band of sand and gravel 3-6 ft in thickness and 6 ft below the topsoil. The gold bearing gravels sat atop the bedrock.  The miners use a floating separations plant consisting of a trommel and a sluice. The machine had a long elevator with a belt for transferring gravel and rock from the sluicing operation.

The gold is recovered in a densly knapped carpet positioned along the bottom surface of the sluice. The gold particles are trapped in the fibrous mat and are periodically flushed out into centrifuge bowls for further separation.

The operation requires a good deal of readily available water. Ted recounted that the sluice process water was returned to a pond for reuse.  The position of this pond had to be managed constantly.

Here is how the operation works. The overburden on the claim must be removed well before the sluicing is to begin. This is done with a D-9 Caterpillar. Owning a large piece of machinery in the wilds of Alaska is an expensive proposition. A small mining operation cannot afford a new Cat, so a used machine must be purchased and delivered. This machine consumes X gallons of diesel per hour and suffers from mechanical breakdowns on occasion.

A small mining operator must be able to do maintenance and repairs because having a mechanic on site may not be possible.  The operator must have plenty of working cash on hand to pay for very expensive fuel and parts. Flying parts in will consume much of the short mining season.

The operator must carefully scrape the overburden away to reveal the ore body.  Leaving too much overburden will consume extra sluicing plant time.  Once the ground is scraped a pond must be constructed in order to support a floating sluice plant.

The sluicing plant is fed by an end-loader or back hoe. The gravel and sands are loaded into a trommel to sort the material and remove the large rock. The finer mesh gravels are then washed onto a sluice where a flow of water will wash the material across riffles to cause deposition of the denser components like gold.  Carpet positioned below the riffles will trap the fines and prevent them from being washed away by overexuberant water flows.

Ted said that gold dust recoveries can be as much as 6 ounces per hour when everything was operating smoothly.  While this sounds like a lot of money at the current price of gold, bursts of profitable sluicing can easily be overcome with expenses and downtime due to logistical snags, equipment mishaps, and unanticipated difficulties with the deposit itself.

One of the problems that this kind of mining operation can encounter with subsurface deposits in Alaska is the presence of permafrost. Ted explained that his early departure form the site was due to extensive permafrost in the claim. If you cannot dig up the gravel, you cannot recover the gold from it. Like any other single continuous processing train, downtime leads to a cessation of operating capital.

In Ted’s experience this summer, all of the puzzle pieces were in position except for the condition of the gravel deposit. It happened to be frozen in place.  It remains to be seen if these operators will return next year.

It is what it is

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It is funny how I revert back to basic skills I learned in an undergrad class called Organic Qualitative Analysis. Naturally, this course is long extinct. The prof who taught it has retired and all of the newbie profs are experts in hyphenated technologies like nano-_____, bio-_______, and _______-mass spec.  I’m glad that a senior chem major can have the chance to do atomic force microscopy or make nano materials. I wish I had that opportunity. But let’s not forget the basics of our craft- basic physical manipulation of materials.

I just isolated an unusual organic compound as beautiful buff needles by old fashioned hot filtration and recrystallization from 95 % ethanol. Crystallization is something I never tire of doing. The hunt for a solvent system that will throw down the xtals is a kind of chase. Watching the crystals nucleate and grow is one of natures great shows and is very satisfying.  I can retire for the evening and feel like I actually did someting today besides creating files on a hard drive somewhere.

Late Night in DC

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Th’ Gaussling is presently watching Bill Maher on HBO in a so-so hotel a mile or so north of the White House in DC.  Richard Dawkins is bantering with Maher pointing out that we’re all African. Meanwhile a chinese food menu slides under the door and helicopers buzz annoyingly overhead. The urgent piping of ambulance sirens bounces off the concrete and glass canyons of the city while the Doppler shifted timbre of the sirens gives a hint of movement.  It reminds me of what a different experience you can have just sitting somewhere else. At home this time of night I can hear the clamorous yapping of coyote pups a few hundred yards in the distance.

I’m in DC for a workshop. It’s not intensely thrilling, admittedly. But I do some volunteer work for the ACS and once in a great while you have to make the pilgrimage to learn the secret handshakes and be fitted for special utility undergarments all ACS volunteers must wear. OK, I’m kidding about the handshakes.

Switching planes in Charlotte, NC, I was pleased to see an encouraging thing in the airport terminal. Along the windows of the food court there were white wooden rocking chairs occupied by travelers rocking away blissfully.

White House

Heck and Grubbs

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Richard Heck and Bob Grubbs, Gordon Conference, Salve Regina, 2005

Here is a picture I took of Richard Heck in the spring of 2005 posing with Bob Grubbs before his trip to Sweden. This was taken at the Organometallic Chemistry section of the Gordon Conference at Salve Regina in 2005.  It is a great place to spend a few days giving or listening to chemistry talks, though the dorm accommodations are a bit spartan.

I think the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Heck, Suzuki, and Negishi was well deserved.  The coupling reactions they uncovered are a great alternative to some otherwise awkward transformations and have enabled much development around the world.

Here is my question- Is -B(OH)2 a meta or an ortho-para director for electrophilic aromatic substitution? At least in principle. In practice it is difficult to determine due to competing deborylation.

This was taken on one of my very last rolls of Kodacolor film.

2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

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10/5/10.  Which chemists do you suppose will get the call from Sweden this year? 

I’ll guess Breslow or Whitesides again.

But then, what about some catalyst guys? Heck, Tsuji, Suzuki, Sonogashira, to name a few? (D’oh!! Are they all alive?)  Think about how normal it has become to do an aryl coupling reaction with a boronic acid and a PGM or Ni.  Look at the wide variety of boronates on the market as well as the endless array of catalysts and ligands for coupling transformations.  

This is what happens to industrial chemists mid-career. We lose track of what is hot in the field as a whole. We’re burrowed deep into the hide of one kind of proprietary technology or other and locked into place by the golden shackles of confidentiality. Pretty soon there are entire fields of endeavor that you’ve never heard of and thirty year old rock star professors who sport big grants and hoards of enthusiastic young acolytes.

Staarkrakken Institute to Change the Standard Taper Joint

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Guapo, Arizona.  10/1/10.  The Staarkrakken Institute at Pultroon University in cooperation with ThermoFissure Corporation have announced the development of a new ground glass joint standard for the 21st century. The laboratory glassware joints to be retired initially are the 14/20, 24/40, and 29/42 joints. The taper angle will be raised by 1.8 degrees on all subsequent designs. Ball joint design standards will change as well. Look for ball joint standards to change in early 2014.  Additionally, the outside diameter of the joint will be increased, so Keck clips will also undergo a redesign.

This change is the result of years of marketing studies designed to determine how satisfied chemists were with the familiar standard taper joint. Market researchers found that customers rarely had strong opinions about their familiar standard taper joints or simply expressed “boredom” with the topic. So, in an effort to stimulate fresh demand, executives from ThermoFissure Corporation approached the Staarkrakken Institute for design studies that would lead to stimulated sales of lab glassware.

Olaf Staarkrakken, Director of the Staarkrakken Institute and grandson of founder Nels Staarkrakken, commented “this is the right time for change in the worlds laboratories. We believe that this upgrade in glassware will strengthen joints everywhere. The time is now and we’re proud to lead the way.”

Robert “Stone” Hanusly, Director of Sales and Marketing at ThermoFissure, announced the arrival of the Fissure brand of laboratory glassware using the new standard taper joints. Hanusly added that the Fissure brand is expected to be a big hit among R&D workers and that they have built up their inventory of Fissure glassware in anticipation of high demand. Mr. Hanusly commented that a wide array of adapters will be available.

Civic Hygiene

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I like to check in on Bruce Schneier’s website now and then. He is a security guy who seems to have a balanced view of these things.  In particular, his post on wire tapping the internet is insightful.

It’s bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state. No matter what the eavesdroppers say, these systems cost too much and put us all at greater risk.  Bruce Schneier, 10/1/10.

The problem with having massive infrastructure for threat assessment is that they’ll always find something, or at least imagine something. It is in the nature of the state security apparatus to rank its survival highest and to take measures to delegate resources to that end first.  

Just how much sympathy should citizens have in regard to the reach and efficiency of state security organs?  Civil liberties are more important than clerical efficiency.  Americans have been watching too many cop shows on television. It feeds a paranoia seated deep in the brainstem and leads to expectations that discount civil liberty.

Meanwhile, in rehearsal …

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Our theatre group is producing You Can’t Take it With You in 5 weeks at a modest venue in our small village. We’re heavily into rehearsal now. We have a cast of 19 and all of the attending problems that go with a mob that size. I play a Wall Street business man, so I get to be slightly more bellicose and uppity than normal. We have a handful of very experienced actors from local community theatre.  They have been very gracious in putting up with tedious wannabe’s like myself. Curiously, I am not the only chemist on stage. The other chemist is far more experienced than I and she does a fantastic job.

For me, the hardest part is simply memorizing the lines. Nowhere in my life do I rely on memorizing large amounts of text. Being a scientist, I remember generalities and relationships and reason my way through problems as I encounter them. Recalling tracts of text from auditory cues is wildly outside my comfort zone. But that is what this is all about. Spending time outside the comfort zone and getting my remaining neurons active.

Customer Service. The Fifth Ring of Hell.

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Things can go very wrong  for a customer service representative. Especially if I’m at the other end of the phone with the poor sod who picked up the phone. Case in point: I recently had the need to find an analytical testing company to have some material properties measured.  So, I go to my good friend, Mr. Google, for some listings. I find a few hits and begin to make some calls. 

My first contact was the customer service rep from a large international testing operation. I told the young lady what tests I wanted and she told me that before anything could happen, I’d need to send her the MSDS of the material in question. They had many labs all over the world and she would send the MSDS to the approriate lab. Wanting only to talk to a person about their basic capabilities and what is involved, I asked for a number. She declined. It was thursday and I went home. I had no intent of shipping them an MSDS. And evidently they had no intention of deviating from their procedure. Two of the components were edible and the third is commonly used by motorists.

Tuesday morning it was obvious that I needed to call again, so this time I was answered by a young fellow who promptly looked up my email address and stated flatly that they were waiting to receive the MSDS documents. There was a lot of back and forth and it ended with my pulling rank as an indignant customer with the tenor of one who was elder to the customer service rep. I was in angry professor mode.

Later that day I received a call from a sales rep. The salesman said he’d speak to a lab somewhere in TX.

Meanwhile, these  people were diddling around following their protocols and policies, so I found a company who would talk to me about the problem straight away. I received a quote, got approval, and ginned up a purchase request. Raw mats are on the way and the PO should go out today.  The first company I contacted hasn’t even responded yet. They think the ball is still in play.

So, what is the problem?  Having been through multiple consulting episodes with many sales and marketing consultants, I know what kinds of neat and tidy packages are offered by such people.  Business consultants sell plans and protocols. They sell the illusion of order and organization. They make managers feel like their sales organsization can be fashioned into a Teflon-slick, low overhead selling machine. Sometimes this is actually possible. Sales consultants will say that there are customers out there that you do not want to have. Customers who take a disproportionate fraction of your time are to be avoided. Lookers and tire kickers. Hagglers. They all require energy and time.

To optimize the customer contact side, they will devise chutes for the customers to glide into. You recognize this- the accursed automated phone answering systems that large organizations have is one such example. It is a sorting mechanism. A way to channel and rank prospects into a preorganized stream of tiered prospects. It has an important screening function which is separating the wheat from the chaff.

Where this company went wrong was their religious adherence to their protocol. They are prepared to lose customers who will not file up in their queue to shell out the preliminaries. I was brusquely transferred for someone else to deal with.  Sales is a numbers game. The more customer contacts you have the higher the sales numbers will be.  While their system appears to be efficient, they failed to grasp that some customers like myself would really prefer to have a few words with a person. A few minutes of back and forth with the lab guy who got my business assured me that they understood what I needed and could provide it. I rewarded him with a PO.  Customer service is is really customized service. Once the customer calls, your devotion should be to them, not just the protocol.

Sometimes it is dumb to be too smart.