Category Archives: Angst

Hu- The Human Element

1 Reply

We’ve all seen the ad on television with it’s folksy music and mosaic of compelling images while the voice-over waxes philosophic about the “Human Element”. It is a very well done piece of public relations art.  The theme is that the practice of chemistry is ultimately about serving people.  I’m inclined to agree, though the ad does gloss over the imbalance between service to the stakeholders and the shareholders.  But that is the general state of affairs with the whole of the corporate world.  We’re all stakeholders, but only a few are actual shareholders.

Few people outside our field associate chemistry with the term “high technology”.  That is commonly reserved for medicine, electronics, and aerospace.  Just look at any news outlet or magazine. If it ain’t happenin’ in space or in the hospital or it doesn’t involve TV or cell phones, it is too boring for words. 

But in fact, chemistry deserves to be in that elite group as well.  We chemists know that the ballyhoo about advances in medicine typically resolve to advances in the chemical sciences.  It’s the same for electronics and even aerospace because they rely heavily on the material sciences. OK, so our chosen field is not the object of admiration. We’re probably better off for it.

It is an understatement to say that the human element is important.  My observation is that resolving issues with the other elements is almost always easier than issues relating to this one element- Hu.  Using it to titrate buy-in, cooperation, or just help often requires the most subtle interactions and the results can be spectacularly non-linear. 

Sometimes Hu is refractory, other times it is pyrophoric.  It can be most agreeable, or not.  I still do not understand it very well.  But I’ll keep trying. 

Isotope Mojo Blues

3 Replies

Near as I can tell, there is some kind of demand in the marketplace for all of the elements from 1 through 92, with the exceptions of Pm, At, and Rn, I suppose. It is hard to gauge the trade in actinides since precious little gets outside the realm of government regulatory frameworks. Clearly there is demand for certain isotopes of Th, U, and Pu.  But the nuclear regulatory people keep a tight reign on that stuff.

I remember a pottery class I took some years back in a nearby town. I was snooping through the pottery stockroom looking for glazes and what did I find? I found a sizeable quantity of Thorium nitrate.  These hapless middle-aged, post-hippy era, meadow muffin starving artisans running the co-op clearly had no idea that they had an actinide a nuclear-age artifact in their midst. Obviously, it had been secured for colored glaze applications.  I warned them about it but was met with the cow-in-the-headlights-look. I call it the “bovine stare”.  So, I brought a GM survey meter the next week and opened up the jar with a few of them standing there. As the clicks ramped up from the beta’s and as I switched the attenuation to keep the needle on scale, I thought I heard the unmistakeable faint slapping sound of multiple sphincters slamming shut.

The first question was “Would I like to have it?”.  Pppffffttttt!  “Hell no!” says I.  Nuclear cooties. Jesus H. Crimony!!  I did a careful survey with the GM counter and found that the surrounding area was clean. The material (early 1960’s vintage by the looks of the label) had hardly been used, so I was confident that contamination was not too bad, if indeed there was any. There may have been alpha emitters but this counter wouldn’t pick them up.  I gave some names of hazardous waste vendors and a stern warning not to drop it or spill it.  That’s the last I heard of it.

I remember a seminar in grad school when a visiting rock star from ETH gave an organic seminar detailing the use of Li-6 in NMR studies.  The fellow lamented in his fastidious German/Swiss accent that it was difficult to get Li-6.  He also said that for a time much of the refined Lithium in the market place was depleted of Li-6.  It would be interesting to hear someone comment on the accuracy of this. 

Bloggenvolk- ACS Chicago Meeting Minus Gaussling

Leave a reply

Sadly, regrettably, and with heavy heart Th’ Gaussling must disclose that he was asked to cancel his trip to the ACS meeting in Chicago. The clarion call of duty has sounded for all hands on deck.  Mister midshipman Gaussling will take heed and report to battle stations.  Ours is not to wonder why.

It is probably a good thing. I always spend way too much money on books at these meetings anyway.   There is always the Gordon Conference ….

Perhaps other bloggenvolk can meet in Chicago.  I think it is important for people to socialize.

Untied Airlines

1 Reply

Having flown a recent round trip on Untied Airlines- I’ve scrambled the letters in the name so they shall remain anonymous \;-), I’d like to post a few comments about the experience. This recitation of grievances only covers the latest experience with air travel. 

Untied airline, with it’s eternal financial and labor crises, seems to be economizing by restricting customer contact with its sparse staff.  These poor sods who work for UA seem to be in a constant crisis mode. To be fair, the Untied staff seemed chipper and even displayed moments of good humor.  But fundamentally this company is a dinosaur limping along by artificial means.

The few staff who work behind the now ubiquitous self check-in stations rarely look up to see who might need help.  By requiring customers to select limited options from the computer check-in stations, you freeze out degrees of freedom in the customer interaction process and make life simpler for the airline.

Untied is now requiring that customers pay to use the curbside Sky Cap check-in services at Denver International, one of it’s bigger hubs.  So the guys humpin’ luggage out in the weather and breathing car exhaust are taking credit cards and quizzing folks on who touched their bags.  I thought that curbside check-in sped things up for the airline and its use was to be encouraged. Now it’s a nickel & dime profit center.

Saturday March 17, we were waiting for Untied flight XYZ from John Wayne to Denver.  An hour before departure another flight of Denver customers moved en mass from another gate to ours.  The ensuing delay and confusion was painful to watch and I won’t bore anyone with the details. It was pathetic.

Another beef with Untied.  The pilots switch on the seatbelt sign at the slightest indication of turbulence.  So if you had designs on a trip to the lav in your ticked section, just forget it. Other Airlines like Frontier seem to have a more realistic threshold for this.

Isn’t First Class seating in what you might call the “crumple zone”? 

Here is my fantasy- I’ll invite airline executives to our home for a dinner party.  As they arrive, they’ll wait in line for entry with their shoes off.  I’ll randomly pull guests out of line for an undignified search but refrain from answering questions. Once inside, they’ll sit in the foyer until called to the “dinner table”.  The dinner table will actually be several rows of chairs with TV trays, all tightly packed together in a closet. Tiny bags of processed foodstuffs will be issued. After some delay, the scraps will be picked up, making sure to knock a few elbows in the process. After more delay, the exectuves will be asked to exit, single file.  I’ll be standing at the door to issue a smarmy farewell. 

Air travel used to be fun and exciting. I looked forward to it. Now it is just a series of indignities and minor outrages.  Pity. I get to the stratosphere so infrequently that it should really be fun when I get there.

An Authentic Life

3 Replies

So, if you live in a major metropolitan area like LA, how do you go about having adventure? Where are the untrodden corners that a person can explore? How does a person go about living an authentic life?  In such places, a person is absolutely surropunded by structure- streets, neighborhoods, commerical districts, underground infrastructure, zoning, civil law, criminal law, home owners associations, etc. You can’t dig a hole without doing a utility check. The airspace overhead is a codified layercake governed by the Federal Aviation Regulations.  Every aspect of life is structured. 

Even recreation is highly engineered in every way. I’m presently at DisneyLand. Every sound, texture, taste, smell, and view has been thoughtfully engineered for some specified effect. DisneyLand is a confederation of attractions held together by the glue of merchandising. In fact, virtually every form of recreation in SoCal (except the beach) has been contrived to give some kind of virtual experience. 

The effect of show business can be seen and heard in many ways here.  You can hear it in the way people speak, the cadences and the mannerisms are part of the Hollywood schtick.  It has permeated all of the surrounding space.  Show business remains what it was a hundred years ago, but with the raster scan of electronic immediacy.  It is still the rattling of a stick in a bucket of swill. The promise of titillating wonders and thrills. I’m hooked.

Bloggenvolk Chicago ACS Meeting

6 Replies

A group photo at the Chicago ACS meeting.  That would be fun and blessedly easy.  If bloggenvolk want to linger and talk, they could do that. (If you haven’t been to the Art Institute, I heartily advise a visit.)  It’ll be Chicago in March, so that means outdoors may be nasty.  We just need someone to shoot the photo and post it somewhere on the web. 

What about monday noon, at the convention center, in the entrance near that rotating product literature carosel they always have? Any takers?? C’mon.  Be a sport! I’ll be wearing a badge that says “Gaussling”. 

Cold War II

Leave a reply

In case you were sleeping, the Bush administration has looked up from its reassembly of Humpty Dumpty in the middle east and noticed, in apparent dismay, that relations with Russia and South America have fallen apart.  Golly Batman, how could it have happened?

That fountain of truth, Pravda, has been faithfully grinding out their grievances in regard to US insolence around the world.  Now that Russia has extinguished most of its free press, they can focus on a more coherent message.

Perhaps someone can set me straight.  The Soviet Union implodes in the early 1990’s. Arguably the most notable political event of the latter 20th century. Russia experiments with market economics. Yeltsin leaves. KGB veteran Vlad Putin takes power. Some oligarchs go to prison. Bad time in Chechnya. Journalists are assassinated. Dissassembly of what went for a free press happens.  Polonium murder of Litvenenko.  Putin initiates dispeptic criticism of US policy in general, and US plans for missile placement in former eastern bloc real estate in particular.  US awakened from desert trance to find that Russia is pissed.

Perhaps if the Dobson krewe in Colorado Springs were more interested in Russian politics they might have directed Cheney to pay more attention.  Wow. Did I say that? That was really cynical.

Active Denial System- RF Radiation Weapons

13 Replies

It appears that some of our clever friends and neighbors at the local military/industrial complex have been busy designing millimeter-wave radio frequency weapons.  Last year the DoD announced the development of a new form of weapon billed as non-lethal to fill the “gap between shoot and shout”.  The device consists of a powerful rf source and what must be a fairly narrow beamwidth antenna for illuminating unruly people.  The website includes video clips of test subjects and their descriptions of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of this radiation weapon. 

I refer to it as a radiation weapon because that is precisely what it is.  Millimeter wave radiation is directed at a person or a crowd and in short order the recipients in the beam feel their skin temperature rise to discomfort. Whether it truly raises skin temperature or the sensation is an artifact of surface electrical currents in the skin is unclear. The fact is that it can cause instantaneous discomfort and anxiety about burning to a crisp.  Obviously, the purpose is to discourage aggressive behaviour in individuals or of crowds and do so in a non-lethal manner. 

So, really, what is wrong with this?  In a sense it is like a shock collar on a dog.  An occasional burst of juice causes the unruly dog to suspend the offensive behaviour.  The dog learns the lesson and is not physically harmed by it. 

I’ll admit to being quite uncomfortable with this “technology”.  The potential for abuse and exploitation is staggering.  If a short burst of rf energy will cause people to scatter or desist their behaviours, what will a long exposure do?  And, just what happens to someone on prolonged exposure?

What is the difference between negative reinforcement and torture?  Is it the difference between a 5 second exposure and 60 seconds?  And, when will a tin-pot dictator acquire this capability now that we have proudly trotted ours out?  Whereas ours will have controls for non-lethal operation, would a terror group or arms merchant bother to have safety protocols to guard against overexposure? Maybe a stripped down version absent interlocks will be the weapon of choice among African dictatorships.

How long will it take for civilian units to come on stream? What US city will be the first to acquire one of these things for crowd control and when?  LA?  DC?  NYC?? 2015? 2020?  Pretty soon every SWAT commander will be clamoring for one “just in case”.  Whose march on the Capital Mall in DC will trigger the first use of such a device on civilians? 

Can the energy be reflected back to the source or in some other direction?  Is a metal trash can lid or aluminized mylar blanket an effective countermeasure?  Maybe we’ll see rock throwing 12 year olds in Gaza with a stone in one hand and a trash can lid in the other after its inevitable introduction in the middle east.

Microwave/millimeter technology is ubiquitous.  No nuclear materials. No ammunition.  Just a powerful rf source and an antenna. No doubt arms merchants are already lining up buyers for this weapon of mass agony.

What a lamentable development for mankind.  Our ability and willingness to commit violence from a distance is one of our greatest downfalls.

Better Gadgets

4 Replies

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced on 3-2-07 that the US would be pursuing the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program.  The program makes a lot of sense on many levels. But the timing of the press release is a bit odd.  Certain sandy states will no doubt notice the irony of the program. While the US is browbeating them into abandoning their dreams of a fissile future, we on the other hand are pursuing better and safer nukes.  Of course, we’ll argue that it is a smaller and safer stockpile, and I’m sure that is true. But I’ll wager that the next generation nuke will be designed for better efficiency as well. 

Maybe we’ll launch them from the new Cheney Class of submersible aircraft carriers…