Category Archives: CounterCurrent

Top chemistry professors get the idea

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A recent issue of C&EN (the Specialty Chemicals swimsuit issue, Vol 89, number 5) quotes several top research profs on the topic of the present glut of PhD’s.  Seems that these professors profess to actually grasp the job picture for recent and current grads.  Was there a flash of light or was there a visitor in the night who whispered the situation to them?  These folks have been benefitting from cheap, abundant, and enthusiastic labor to propel their research forward for decades and suddenly they claim to be paying attention to the job picture for their alums. Oh please!

In his column, Rudy Baum concludes that it isn’t so much that that we have too many PhD’s, but that we aren’t teaching them what they need to “succeed and benefit society.” 

OK. I can get on board with that. But it begs the question, who is going to teach them what they need to know, whatever that is? A bunch of academics who have spent their careers grooming students to be academics?  Are you kidding me? The status quo is not capable of adjusting curricula to make this change.  It isn’t in their bag of tricks. It is well beyond their experience.

Imagine trying to convince a group of faculty members of anything, much less that their past efforts are now obsolete?  Just imagine that happening. I can’t.

C&EN is the publicity organ of ACS. Imagine the handwringing and chafing that had to happen before these Polyanna’s came to publish such findings? The horror, the horror.

The university/research apparatus in the USA is the principal system within which basic R&D gets done in this country. Resources by way of tax revenues are plowed into the university system to maintain the research effort. Corporations hire the graduates of this system and benefit from their education by way of invention and innovation.

IBM, Dow, GE, GM, etc, didn’t grow wealthy and successful in a vacuum. Their hires, many of which came from the US university/research infrastructure, brought their eduction to bear on the problems of market penetration faced by these companies.

These companies took advantage of the entire spectrum of American infrastructure available to them. They did not have to build roads, monitor public health, run power distribution lines, build hydroelectric dams, or fight wars on foreign soil themselves. That infrastructure was provided to them. Yet, these and other corporations are unhappy with operations in the USA and, rather than inventing a domestic solution, are happy to export their operations and magic.

Over time, university departments and institutions grow based on state and federal funding. Now, the system finds itself possibly with excess capacity. But who is going to admit it? Who is going to go along with American industry and admit that R&D is too expensive to do in the USA?

Part of the problem with the present dearth of scientific jobs is with the structure and imperatives of the publically owned corporation. Publically owned corporations are owned by absentee landlords. The owners, i.e., we who have 401(k)’s, are only interested in quarterly growth. Absentee landlords don’t want to throw cash at a new roof and an upgraded sewer line. They (we) insist on rapid growth in shareholder value. That imperative isn’t necessarily compatible with the organic growth of a business or a market. So, if outsourcing of R&D offshore will save money, then the CEO better do it. I think we need a new business model that isn’t so anxious to export our magic.

My libertarian friends will say that this is the natural result of market forces, as though whatever the market wants is good by definition. 

The market is like a stomach. It has no brain. It only wants one thing- more.

Is that automatically the only acceptable consequence? I don’t think so. We have civilization to buffer us from the extremes of reality. Those who advocate adherence to pure market logic are missing the point of civilization.

February Linkkenfest

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Did you hear about the polar bear that swam 426 miles? The polar bear and yearling cub swam from near Barrow, Alaska, across the Beaufort Sea to the coast in Canada. The bear was equipped with GPS and a temperature sensor. Investigators say the bear lost 100 lbs in the ordeal. The cub did not survive. Apparently there were no ice floes for the bear to crawl onto.

Tropical cyclone Yasi, a Category 5 storm, has slammed into the coast of Australia in Queensland.

Those wacky libertarians.

Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time, by The Economist.

Robert J. Samuelson at the Wilson Quarterly offers a compelling analysis of the Great Recession.

As for greed and dishonesty, their role in the crisis is exaggerated. Of course, greed was widespread on Wall Street and elsewhere. It always is. There was also much mistaken analysis about the worth of mortgages and the complex securities derived from them. But being wrong is not the same as being dishonest, and being greedy is not the same as being criminal. In general, banks and investment banks weren’t universally offloading mortgage securities known to be overvalued. Some of this happened; testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission shows that some banks knew (or should have known) about the poor quality of mortgages. But many big financial institutions kept huge volumes of these securities. They, too, were duped—or duped themselves. That’s why there was a crisis. Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Wachovia, among others, belonged to this group. –Robert J. Samuelson, Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2011.

Cuppa Noodles

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Working late in the lab tonight. Listening to Music from the Hearts of Space on NPR. Couldn’t leave for supper so I had to break into my emergency cup-o-noodles for nourishment, such as it is.  Night is a good time to write reports and tumble deep into the dendritic recesses of the internet. Some companies won’t let you in the building after hours. I’m good as long as I don’t unchain the dragon and let her fly around.

Have to purify some inorganic stuff I made. It’s very problematic. The material has a large coefficient of expansion in the solid phase from room temp up to the mp. The solid mass tends to break the container if you’re not careful.  It’s a real pisser to make some moisture sensitive stuff only to have the jar or flask break on warming.  The earth’s atmosphere will have its way with my lovely anhydrous product and deliquesce it into a corrosive hellbroth.  Glovebags are useful, but not always the answer.  Deliquescent powders have a way of contaminating the interior surfaces of a glovebag, making it sticky like a empty bag of honey-baked ham.

I use glovebags from Aldrich and am less than happy with them. The ziplock fastener always fails after just a few uses no matter how gently I use it.  I’m pretty sure the check we send to SAF for the bags always clears the bank and the funds remain negotiable until they need it. 

And speaking of SAF, I have received many bottles of reagents lately that are absent the usual physical properties printed on the label. You know,  like MW, density, etc. And what print there might be is absolutely microscopic. C”mon guys.

Carbonate Fusions

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I’ve been reading about extractive metallurgy in my spare time for the last 18 months. Finally I get to try it. The other day I rediscovered the solvent power of molten sodium carbonate. At 1000 C it dissolves porcelain crucibles. Luckily an hour at 1000 C wasn’t enough for a catastrophic failure, just some melt through on the bottom.

Somehow, seeing your reaction vessel glowing yellow-orange (on purpose) is deeply satisfying and awe inspiring.

At these temperatures, the notion of acidic and basic conditions needs to be recalibrated for low temperature chemists like me. Irrespective of the crucible, I did digest my sample and convert it into a yellowish meteorite shaped like a flattened cupcake.

Carbonate fusions are used to release metals from silicate matrices. Molten carbonate hydrolyzes the silicate matrix and renders the resulting mass amenable to attack and dissolution by mineral acids.  Platinum is the preferred crucible material of construction.  I have such a Pt crucible. It’s beautiful.

anti-IYC 2011

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So, what does it mean to have an International Year of Chemistry?  What should it properly celebrate or advance?

I think we chemists have a bit of a professional inferiority complex. The physicists have control over astronomy and space science with its endless pageant of high profile activities and imagery. Glamor-boy physicists have numerous programs on cable channels. Any synthetic utterance of Steven Hawking turns into a documentary.  Medical science people are glorified to embarrassing levels for the most slender blips of therapeutic progress.  Begoggled chemists do flash-bang demonstrations for whomever will watch.

Who will love us for the gift of cheap and abundant synthetic goods? Who will love and adore us for our facility with bond making and breaking?  How many times has the product of your long endeavor been little more than a clear, colorless oil or a white crystalline solid?  Besides you, who could boggle at this? Who will stop and take in a lingering look and shake their head in admiration and wonderment?

I think chemists should clam up about what it is that makes our field so endlesslly fascinating.  We should resist the urge to share the wonder with the world. We should be stingy with the insights and the beauty.  Call it “The Craft” and make it a mystery.  Create scarcity and let the world pay a premium for us to divulge our hard won wisdom.  If we want to create a buzz, then why not try to be quiet about it?  The world adores a mystery.

On the mysteries of show business. Th’ Gausslings 14th Epistle to the Bohemians.

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Last night, our production of The ODD COUPLE had its biggest audience to date. The audience enjoyed the show. They laughed at our delivery of Neil Simon‘s lines and were engaged in the story.  The suspension of disbelief actually happens.

The ODD COUPLE, Felix with burned London broil (1/21/11, Moon Theatre Company)

 

What is clear to one who is involved in this sort of thing is that once you have the show cast and directed properly, the play takes on a life of its own.  But not all aspects jump to life and run around.

Show business has two sides- the art side and the business side.  As I said above, the art aspect is taken care of by the director.  The business side, the haunting space of the producer, is perhaps more difficult in my experience.

The business side comprises the nuts and bolts of funding cast & crew, props, the venue, set design and construction, etc.  This is very concrete and relatively easy to understand and manage.  What is less than easy to understand is the publicity function. 

Publicity today must be done in the schizophrenic world of print and internet media.  The center of the community theatre-going demographic are the retired people and those over, say, 60 years of age. Go to most any production and you’ll see the Q-tips and Blue Hairs in the seats.

In order to put butts in seats, this group must receive the message and thence be wrenched from the recliner in front of the DirecTV and compelled to go out into the evening traffic, find a parking spot, and buy a ticket. 

After rehearsal the other night, a few of my fellows and I repaired to the local establishment for some beverages. This public house featured an open mike performance by local musicians who were actually quite good. The tables were filled with an entirely different demographic group than we had set our sights upon and the air was full of expectant optimism.

After the waitress delivered my cold glass of liquid bread I put  to her a sincere query.  I asked her what it is that would compel her and her fellows to attend community theatre?  This fine specimen of a 20-something stood there flummoxed. She was accustomed to fending off the unwanted advancements of inebriated customers, but this sort of question was completely unexpected. She left to tend another table, promising an answer on her next visit. 

On her next visit, the waitress, a former theatre major, said that she would be attracted to a production that was … edgy.  That was it.  I acknowledged her comment and asked her if she ever goes to live theatre performances. She said “no”. I asked her how would such a message find its way to her and her compatriots. She thought about it and replied that she didn’t know. There was no single information outlet that percolated up.

I suspect that this interchange represents the situation in miniature. We have so many channels with densely packed data streams pouring into our consciousness that we are overwhelmed with it. Information is cheap and abundant. The value of any given notice of a public event is diluted to an infinitesmal level by the sheer volume of similar such notifications across the multidimensional space of media.

We do suspect that the Blue Hair demographic still reads newspapers and in the future we’ll throw a handful of money at print advertising. But like everyone else, we’ll be uneasy with the expenditure.  It is very difficult to predict the effect of low intensity advertising in any given medium.

High intensity advertising, on the other hand, is a good way to get the message out. But high intensity advertising is high intensity spending and that isn’t an option yet.

Frequently wrong, but never in doubt

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At some point, self-confidence more resembles a learning disorder. This is one of the great truths of history, I believe. The unwise advancement into adverse conditions with little more than the loincloth of bravado has lead to the demise of many. In that group of the many are military and political leaders, businessmen, frontiersmen, ponzi scammers, technocrats, and adventurers of all sorts.

We all like to be around people who are self-assured and cool. The air of self-confidence is a necessary attribute for those entrusted with the authority to commit resources on the large scale. But often the authority is not backed with a durable feedback loop for checks and balances. This is a fatal weakness in any system that focuses the authority on a few to delegate resources.  Sweet enthusiasm may quickly ferment into the delerious elixor of greed. Beware those who are frequently wrong, but never in doubt.

This is the Darwinistic force that lead to the evolution of that curious species, the auditor. The auditor is an omnivore with slender and dextrous fingers for prying under the bark to tease out burrowing pests. The large ears of the auditor and cavernous nasal passages evolved to detect burrowing vibrations and the unusual odors of malfeasance.  The bulbous eye stalks have special neural GAAP networks for the detection of tell-tale body language and with laser-like focus, can pierce the corporate veil and lock onto fraudulent transactions.  Woe is he to whom the auditor has taken special interest.

China’s Stealth Fighter Revealed

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It is interesting that China’s new J20 stealth aircraft has been revealed before deployment. US stealth aircraft were long a source of UFO reports before they were officially acknowledged.  The Chinese J20 aircraft, called a “fighter” by some, bears a striking resemblance to the US F22 Raptor, though larger and perhaps capable of a fighter-bomber role.

China's J20 Aircraft

While some discount the real maturity of Chinese stealth technology, it is clear that they are on track for parity with the US in this regard.  Stealth technology has as much to do with the shape and angle of surfaces and edges as it does radar absoptive coatings. The Chinese already know what it takes. They just have to come up with flight control systems and manufacturing processes to build the aircraft.

Stealth aircraft and nuclear powered aircraft carriers are a potent combination for the projection of power. Will the sun rise on a Chinese nuclear carrier group patrolling the Atlantic by 2020?  Where will their authoritarian marketplace take them, and us?

Back to reality.

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The holidays are over. The christmas lights are now obsolete. The first big snow storm of the season has come and gone. The cryosphere is unceasing in its wicked attempt to thermally equilibrate my house to a ΔT = 0 across the walls. Only high thermal inertia and a near constant stream of methane into the burners will hold it off.

That jolly elf brought Th’ Gaussling a 1 terabyte external hard drive. Years of pdf downloads and treasured jpeg’s streamed silently onto the drive via the fabulous USB port.  Papers on mining & metallurgy, LiBeB cosmochemistry (on the Lithium dip, one of my fascinations), and thousands of photos.

While picking at the guitar the other day it dawned on me why some people choose to play the base guitar.  Four strings are mechanically easier to play than six. Maybe there are other and better reasons, but this seems like a good one. Then, as you advance, there is playing notes from the fifth fret and above.  My brain plasticity turns vitreous at this level. It comes down to repetition of the basics.

Remember the basics: Task at a time- correction in the right direction;  attitude, altitude, cross check;  and, runway behind you is useless!  Dave Benton, Th’ Gausslings flight instructor, ca 1978.

For me and my day job, 2011 will be very much about thermokinetic issues in process safety. We’re going to install a reaction calorimeter and much time and effort will be needed not only in operating the device, but in folding its use into the development cycle. It is one thing to collect thermochemical data. It is quite another to use it to make decisions concerning engineering and process safety.  Considerable effort in my industrial career has been spent in building structure for information archival rather than just bench chemistry.  I didn’t anticipate that.

Our upcoming production of The ODD COUPLE opens in 2 weeks. I’m still rough with my lines, so there is no shortage of stress there. The thought of opening night and sitting on stage in the lights in front of a darkened audience wonderfully concentrates the mind. Neil Simon wrote some great lines in this play.