Category Archives: CounterCurrent

A Modest Proposal for the Eurozone

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Here is what I propose as a solution for the European debt crisis.  Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Ireland should be given the option of swapping land in exchange for their debt. What land? Take a line of latitude from the southernmost tip northward until an area of land redeemed is equal to (debt (Euro) / 5000 Euro/hectare) which covers the debt. 

It should be pointed out that Napoleon voluntarily swapped the Louisiana territory for cash to raise operating funds for his adventures. After all, he was coming into new property in Europe.

As my consulting fee, I’ll take the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. It’s a charming spit of land and will be more than suitable.

Memorial Day and Inventors Conscience

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Here is an interesting post called When Chemists go to War.  It is a good reminder of how our work can be taken to places where we ourselves wouldn’t go.  Ever develop chemistry that has killed someone? What would you do if you developed a substance that was used for destructive purposes? Would it bother you?  Some scientists from the Manhattan Project were troubled by their work on the bomb, but others slept quite well.

I suppose it could be considered similar to the situation with the inventor of the baseball bat. Could this inventor have forseen the use of the bat in committing violence? Probably didn’t cross his mind.  But if you’re inventing new military explosives, how do you cope with the knowledge that your invention’s use is specifically for more precise application of killing power?  The fact is that there are many scientists who have no difficulty with this at all. I’ve met a few of them and they are very sober folks. They know exactly what their invention does and they are eager to do even better.

I think it is this ability to stand behind the abstract technical details, sheltered from the blood and guts reality, that allows scientists to rationalize their work on killing technology. Scientists will never have to carry with them the olfactory battlefield  memories of bomb smoke and shredded bowel.  Weapons labs are relatively safe places to work.  The weapons scientists biggest hazard, realistically, is the commute to and from the lab. Perhaps weapons designers and munitions manufacturers should have to clean up after a car bomb or carry bodies from the scene so as to emphasize the exact consequences of this work.

Maybe the most important thing we can do to honor soldiers lost and wounded in battle is to resolve that we will produce fewer dead and wounded soldiers. One approach embraced by many is to make war more effiicient and more automated. Send machines into battle rather than people. The other approach is to be a bit less warlike. Throttle back on weapons spending. Take the view that war isn’t really glorious, but rather that it is an uncivilized duty we are called upon to do on occasion. 

Amassing huge armed forces presents the temptation to use them.  The goal for our national leaders should be … lead us not into temptation.

Cyanide-Based Legislative Voting Machine

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The US patent literature is full of wondrous inventions and its easy access by computer-machine over the internets is a real boon to historians and hacks like myself.  In the course of my studies into 19th century gold metallurgy, I stumbled across US 7,521, issued July 22, 1850. This patent was issued to Albert N. Henderson of Buffalo, NY.  Mr. Henderson’s invention is entitled IMPROVEMENT IN THE APPLICATION OF ELECTRO-CHEMICAL PRINTING IN COLORS FOR TAKING AYES AND NOES. 

Henderson describes an apparatus for taking the ayes and noes by galvanic electricity and specifically proposed it for use in legislative assemblies. The concept was that at each desk in the assembly would be two keys (switches, as we now call them) for voting either Aye of No. The member would press one of the keys when called to vote, with the result of an electric current passing to a central apparatus with specially treated paper pressed between electrodes. The action of the current in the damp treated paper would be that a vote would be registered as a mark on the paper, recording the vote of the member.  In the end, the only gold connection in the patent related to gold electrodes as a preferred embodiment.

Claim 1.  This patent claims a mode of imprinting words, letters, & figures, etc, upon paper or other fibrous substances between two surfaces of a metal which is not acted upon by the substances employed, on one of which the letters or figures are raised by passing a current of galvanic electricity through the prepared material, substantially as above described.

Claim 2. Passing the electric current between metallic surfaces, as above described, through damp paper otherwise unprepared, and afterward applying a chemical solution, by which the effect of the electricity becomes visible whenever it has passed through the paper, for the purposes above described- telegraphing, etc.

Substances which may be used as part of the solution for the preparation of the paper- Copper sulfate (gives black impression), Potassium cyanide which may be acidified with H2SO4 or HNO3 (!!) to impart a green color with the galvanic current.  A strong solution of KCN with Ag chloride gives a green impression. All above leave white paper until acted upon by electricity.  A weak soln of potassium ferrocyanide (prussiate of potassia) colors the paper slightly and leaves a deep blue impression by the electricity. Henderson prefers to use electrodes of gold or platinum.

This invention has a kind of steampunk aspect that I find very appealing. On the other hand, it is hard to know what knowledge the inventor had with regard to the hazards of KCN or acidified solutions thereof. The patent is silent with regard to the chemical safety questions arising from the use of KCN treated paper.

Misc Sciency Stuff

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Think it’s possible to build an electron microscope in your garage?  This guy did it. Ben Krasnow built himself a scanning electron microscope at home with salvaged electronic parts.  This is beyond cool.

Final flight of Endeavor. Cool shot of rocket in the clouds. Could be photoshopped with all of the color saturation, but maybe not.

Neuroscientists in the UK think that the brains of Apple enthusiasts are stimulated by Apple imagery in the same way that religious adherents are stimulated by religious imagery.

It has been suggested that flood plains exist because of flooding.  Something to consider on your next home purchase.

Nasa is floating the idea that there may be more free floating, lone planets than stars.  Sounds very cold.

The destruction of the world commences this weekend.  I guess we’d better get packed.

Texas Justice. Fishing Crimes.

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You know, I really do like Texans. I lived there for a few years and I think I have an accurate sense of the place.  But Texans are Texans. It really is “like a whole ‘nother country” sometimes.

The Texas legislature recently passed the Fish Fraud law which specifically addresses the problem of fraud at fishing tournaments. The bill passed the house 142 to 4 and the senate 30 to 1 and awaits signing by the governor.  The bill provides penalties for fraud starting at a Class A Misdemeanor for the first offense to a third degree Felony for fishing crimes involving greater than $10,000 in prize money.  

According to the article, game wardens and prosecutors approached Representative Dan Flynn about  a fish fraud incident at Lake Ray Hubbard east of Dallas in October of 2009. Rep Flynn jumped on this outrage and brought the beady eye of scrutiny to bear on those dark hearted anglers who dare to flim-flam fishing tournaments. Case in point:  A semi-pro angler forced a 1 pound weight into a 9.5 lb bass, misrepresenting the weight of the fish and thus defrauding the tournament organizers. 

Without the benefit of a Fish Fraud law, the crooked angler got 15 days in jail, 5 years of probation, and loss of his fishing license for the duration of his probation.

It certainly seems to me like Texas Justice was swift and unblinking in this case without a special law on the books. The miscreant who perpetrated this act was nabbed by the local constable and thrown behind bars.

Ever wonder why there are so many laws on the books? This is an example of how it happens. Somebody games the system and legislators rush in to pack legislative caulking into a perceived hole in the wall. The Texas legislature has felonized yet somethng else. 

Are we really better off with an ever expanding definition of felonious acts?  The fisherman’s wickedness is plain for all to see. But does this one case merit the enactment of yet one more piece of legislation?  If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Maybe it’s best if we take some time off from inventing new laws and look at what we’ve wrought?

Global warming talk

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Our local ACS section meeting tonight featured two speakers with opposite views on anthropogenic global warming (AGW).  One was a senior scientist from CIRES and the other was a retired physics prof from UCONN. 

The physicist did what physics profs like to do which is to say, reduce the problem to constituent elements. To make a long story short, the physicist tried to demonstrate that CO2 levels are the result of warming, not the cause.  He applied Henry’s law and did a lot of handwaving and criticism of climate science and modeling as well as some old fashioned back of the envelope calculations. It was a rather good demonstration of the climate deniers art.

The CIRES guy’s talk was really quite comprehensive and tied in observations from a wide variety of types of experiments to support the notion that CO2 has rapidly ramped up coincident with the industrial revolution- say the last 200 years or so. What was most persuasive to me were the isotopic data showing the deficit of C13 in the recent CO2 buildup. This data suggests that the accumulated atmospheric CO2 levels are measurably tipped towards biomass or fossil fuel origin rather than of inorganic origin.

As near as I can tell, much of the audience of chemists seemed to incline towards the climate denier. A vocal few were certainly skeptical of the data in the sense that the limits of the instrumentation had to be accounted for. But this was the normal skepticism one sees chemists display everywhere. I’ve done it myself.

Obviously, I’m not a climate scientist and would never be confused with one. I’ve been on the fence about AGW until tonight. I think I’m tipping slightly towards AGW now based on the isotopic findings. 

What I saw tonight was more like the parable of the three blind men and the elephant. The AGW denying physicist and more than a few in the audience understood at least part of the data and concepts. And from the area of expertise they held, felt they had a unique perspective on the problem. I gathered this from the nature of the questions asked.  

This is emblematic of the situation and in a similar vein to creationist “science”.  Creationism has all kinds of problems as a model of reality.  But what I often observe in its adherents is a limited knowledge of the theory they are trying to defeat.  In fact, I would offer that creationists comprise a kind of scholarly archtype. Creationists have the answer already and spend their time collecting data in support of it. This is characteristic of people who read devotionally rather than analytically.

I think learned people can fall into a kind of intellectual cul-de-sac from which many never escape. A lot of AGW deniers spend their time trying to debunk the IPCC data rather than performing experiments to achieve greater clarity.  AGW deniers are certainly well represented with conservative affiliation.

I was accosted by a coworker the other day who was so disgusted by my liberal ways and neutral attitude towards AGW that he couldn’t be bothered to expend the energy to fully dress me down for it. It just wasn’t worth the effort, apparently. Thanks friend. Where are all of these liberals the conservatives keep bitching about? I’m not seeing them.

Well Endowed Chair

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The camel’s nose has been snuffling under the tent at Florida State University.  According to Kris Hundley at tampabay.com, Charles G. Koch pledged $1.5 million a few years ago to support faculty in the economics department.  Not unusual at first glance. But what Koch was able to wangle out of the Dean was the right to screen the faculty he is supporting. They want profs cut from a certain cloth. Of course everybody wants that, but the Koch’s are able to write the checks.

You see, Mr. Koch is very smart.  He knows that to properly manage staff, you have to hire well, write their job description, have them agree to goals, and then follow up with annual evaluations. That’s how they do it in business. Why shouldn’t you expect the same from the academy? It’s about inputs and outputs. And the outputs should always be more valuable than the inputs.  You drop a wad of cash on FSU, you expect a return.

I’m sure Dean Rasmussen is very satisfied with this arrangement. I’m sure that he looks very savvy for making this deal. He said that they are now able to offer 8 more classes because of this.  Deans are a very special kind of academic animal. They are nearly always former profs who caught the allure of administration.  They keep their association with their department, but climb the spiral staircase into the stratosphere of Old Main.   From their lofty perch they herd the frequently squabbling but always loquacious cats through the annual cycles of academic life.  Something happens to people once they become a dean, and it’s not always good. All of a sudden student teaching evaluations become insightful and important.

 As Gaye Tuchman explains in Wannabe U (2009), a case study in the sorrows of academic corporatization, deans, provosts and presidents are no longer professors who cycle through administrative duties and then return to teaching and research. Instead, they have become a separate stratum of managerial careerists, jumping from job to job and organization to organization like any other executive: isolated from the faculty and its values, loyal to an ethos of short-term expansion, and trading in the business blather of measurability, revenue streams, mission statements and the like. They do not have the long-term health of their institutions at heart. They want to pump up the stock price (i.e., U.S. News and World Report ranking) and move on to the next fat post.    William Deresiewicz, The Nation, May 23, 2011 Edition.

The Koch’s are engaged in a kind of social reconstruction through the formation of institutions, the backing of political movements, and now penetration of the academic veil. They have the resources and the self-assurance that comes from being highly successful businessmen.  They are very acquisitive fellows- a natural attribute of wealthy industrialists. 

Their corporate cosmology defines a universe of transaction possibilities.  All the world is a market and greater market share is the raison d’etre.  I’m sure that when the Koch brothers look out the window, they see a landscape of markets and a sky full of profit potential.  People like me see rooftops and air handling units. 

In a market-based society, the only real opposition I can apply to the Koch’s is to quit buying Brawny paper towels, Dixi Cups, or Stainmaster carpeting. The average indivdual’s power in the real marketplace is approximately zero.  Self-determination in the marketplace  is proportional to your wealth.  No wonder the Koch’s and their ilk want to see less gov’t and more market. They get to be in charge.

Notes from the South Pole

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A friend is a winter-over staff member this season at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station. The station is accessable by air only for part of the year.  The last flight left more than a month ago or so. This is her second tour at the south pole.  The elevation there is at 2835 meters above sea level, so not only is the cold due to the low sun angle, but also due to altitude.

Life here at Pole is quite the experience. Today’s winds are up around 20 knots and that knocks visibility down to about nothing. The snow is so dry and icy, any winds kick it up like a sand storm. So no outside treks for yours truly today. In fact, I only make it outside maybe twice or three times a week. If auroras are dancing, I’ll suit up and make the effort because standing under the amazing manifestation of solar winds is just breathtaking.  –South Pole Susan 5/8/11

My friend said that her colleague, Marco Polie, is still skiing every day, but lately it’s too extreme even for him with wind chill temps down to -130 F and zero visibility.  Getting lost in a whiteout would be tragic.

People used to joke that the only difference between going to sea and going to jail is the added risk of drowning. Sounds like a similar thing could be said about wintering at the pole.

Reading, searching, researching, and writing. My life as a chemist.

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It turns out that I like Russian fiction. On a lark I picked up a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol on Amazon (ISBN 978-0-14-044907-5). It was worthwhile. 

Actually, it wasn’t such a lark. I was looking for a copy of Diary of a Madman.  The idea was to find a cutting for an audition, in case such an opportunity arose.  Gogol’s Diary of a Madman and The Government Inspector have been performed for generations and, as usual, I’m the last of my age cohort to read it.

I spend my days supervising chemical research, doing reactive hazard studies and IP analysis. From the job description point of view, I’m a walking, jabbering freak. How the hell am I going to get a job elsewhere with a resume like that? HR will look at it and, failing to find an exact match in their organization, toss it into the discard folder.  I don’t fear chemicals, but I do fear HR.  HR is the bane of our profession.

Back to the day job, these areas are basically writing activities and occur at a desk. It has occured to me that working at a desk is more dangerous than working with chemicals.  You soon get fat(ter) and stressed. It’s not good. 

It is funny how job descriptions differ. Many colleagues have jobs where they execute some task by bringing something into a predetermined structure. By that I mean, an analyst performs a standard procedure or the QA manager documents data for a product cert. An accountant performs procedures in the general ledger according to rules. Their work is reasonably well defined and they know when they are done.

Not a single thing I do is amenable to this kind of structured performance.  The chemistry stuff is experimental and involves sorting out what the hell happened. That’s just the nature of applied scientific investigation.

The IP work involves searching for information. If you find a relevant patent, well, you might be near the endpoint. Lucky day. But if you don’t find claims on a composition or a process, it’s a negative result. You have to ask if your search strategy was adequate. Anyone who has used a search engine knows what I mean. Sometimes, you don’t pick the best search terms and you come up with junk. Eventually you blunder into the right term and find the mother lode.

Sometimes an information search becomes dendritic. You find yourself bobbing along in the brackish waters of the “merely interesting”. So, you back up and revise the search terms.  Doing an IP search for an exact composition in CAS is very straightforward. A structure search or a CASRN search is very reliable and fast.

Much time can be wasted with patents that use compositions or processes but do not claim them. In particular I mean patents that mention compounds in the description (or specification) but do not claim them in the claim section.  A great many patents may be served up in the list of hits in this way. How you deal with this depends on what you want and what kind of search tool you’re using.

If you are interested in a class of compositions or the range of technology that might be out there, this is a kind of search that is more dendritic and subject to stranding in cul de sacs. If you do not use Chemical Abstracts Service in some way, your options become restricted.  There are many IP services that tap the various patent offices around the world. Some seem to have their own databases. Many seem to focus solely on searching the patent data through clever use of search terms or the patent classification system. For prior art searching, this is inadequate. For the most part, only CAS can provide reliable hits if a compound was reported in Acta Retracta by Professor van Wingenheuk in 1907.

After a day of reading abstracts and patents, it’s nice to read something well written and get lost in it for a little while. Patents are not written to be easily understood. They are often masterful in their obfuscation. I often admire the conciseness with which many are written. But in the end, they are all disclosures written grudgingly and with the intent to obscure.

The 21st Century. The Century of China or Malthus?

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I’m trying hard not to be gloomy, but I’ve just been over at the The Oil Drum reading a post written by Jeremy Grantham, Chief Investment Officer at GMO Capital. This essay is notable in that it is written by someone in Grantham’s position. What I find so gloomy is the sense that our modern world is like a runaway train in terms of resource consumption.

People have been talking about peak oil and the importance of petroleum in nearly every material aspect of our lives since the Arab oil embaro of the 1970’s.  What free market enthusiasts and libertarians fail to emphasize is that the market is a social phenomenon; it is not physics. It is a phenomenon that is driven by desire.

The market is like a stomach- it has no brain. It only knows that it wants more.

The idea that you remove all elected government oversight and allow this stomach to reign free across the world is just another type of politics. Inevitably and always, money aggregates into the hands of a few percent of the human population and into the wire-transfer hands of synthetic people called corporations.

In a world of increasing scarcity the prospect of reduced consumption confounds political and business practices devoted to growth, since growth typically means increased consumption.

The key psychological barrier is this- How do we feel like we’re improving as we’re making do with less?

As the cost of manufacturing increases due to increased raw material costs, unit prices will rise. The invisible hand of price elasticity of demand will inevitably partition out the elastic from the inelastic goods on the market.  Whole industries relying on discretionary income will feel exposed. 

The challenge for our leaders is to maintain a vibrant economy even though natural resources are becoming ever more scarce. Power is manifested in the allocation of resources. China has pointedly focused on Africa as a source of raw materials for its growing economy.  The act of power is the fact of power. By throwing a lot of money around, and by controlling the flow of resources, China is exercising power. You don’t need to march an army around to demonstrate your power.

China is executing  industrial policy by forging alliances and allocating resources to global sourcing action. The USA dithers with self-destructive party politics, foreign military adventures, and a narcissistic indulgence in “greatness”.  Instead of wearing our hearts on our sleeves, we should roll them up and get to work building a robust and healthy culture.