Category Archives: CounterCurrent

Whoopee!

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Folks have been applauding the appearance of two black quarterbacks facing off in this year’s Super Bowl. I agree, it’s a good thing, finally. But why did it take so long? Is this a trend or just a minor blip in the baseline? Only the Mandarins who control the mighty NFL can know for sure. If it bumps up the bottom line they’ll see to it. It’s not about fair, it’s about margins. Cynical? Ah, yep.

Oh yeah, I managed to go through the whole season without watching even a minute of NFL football. It was grand. I prefer to watch rugby. Unlike NFL football, something is always happening in rugby. If somebody goes down, they just play around the body. Isn’t that kind of savage? Hell yes. If somebody goes down in NFL football, there is a national day of mourning. Pansies.

Meta Making Progress Towards a Science Fiction-Like Dystopia

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A piece in the Washington Post by Prashnu Verma appeared reporting progress with Meta’s Cicero artificial intelligence (AI) system. The thrust of the report is that Cicero can play a game called Diplomacy better than humans. The article is worth reading- I know nothing about AI so all I can do is link readers to the article.

Quoting from the Post article-

“Researchers at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, have unveiled an artificial intelligence model, named Cicero after the Roman statesman, that demonstrates skills of negotiation, trickery and forethought. More frequently than not, it wins at Diplomacy, a complex, ruthless strategy game where players forge alliances, craft battle plans and negotiate to conquer a stylized version of Europe.”

Further down …

“It’s a great example of just how much we can fool other human beings,” said Kentaro Toyama, a professor and artificial intelligence expert at the University of Michigan, who read Meta’s paper. “These things are super scary … [and] could be used for evil.”

The nations of the world have civil and criminal laws to discourage and punish people who use their natural intelligence to commit crimes and misdeeds. What about those who use- or unleash- AI to achieve ends that would otherwise be ruled as unethical or even illegal? Pet owners can be held liable for the damage their pets do. Why shouldn’t AI owners have at least the same liability? Could a court order the alteration of an AI’s algorithms in a way that would shut down objectionable or unlawful “behavior”.

If the work product in the application of any intelligence includes action, then where does that leave an AI that can make decisions independently? When could we let it loose to do things that may affect people in novel circumstances? And what kind of ethical responsibility do programmers have in anticipating negative outcomes and acting to arrest them? Lots of questions.

One of the consequences of technological advance has always been the elimination of jobs. That is, getting the same or better results with a lower headcount. It represents cost savings and added margins for an organization. AI will be a valuable tool in the eternal drive for faster-better-cheaper.

AI will almost certainly change many experiences in life. AI systems will manage and replace people in the workplace. It is likely to improve multitasking in many job descriptions, boosting productivity over human counterparts. AI will produce a more effective sales force because the art of persuasion will become much more highly refined. Just what we need- craftier salespersons humping our legs for a sale.

On the positive side, AI has the potential for executing better judgement in many situations. For example, law enforcement could be polished to a point where many errors in judgement can be avoided. This applies across the board in all activities.

AI will also enable criminal intent. The ability to execute crimes will be improved with better judgement, knowledge and fewer mistakes.

Soon, if not already, wars will be guided and fought between AI systems. Cold war type activity could be refined to produce better intelligence and undercover schemes to outwit the other side. Leaders could put AI to use in the darker side of governance. It could be used to keep better track of individuals and information related to them. It could also be used to apply punishment to people without the messy issue of personal morals.

Any dark human activity you can imagine can be made more effective with the application of AI. If it can be tried, it will be tried.

Gas Coalification Pilot Plant Startup 2Q2024

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Engineers at the Gas Coalification Institute at Poltroon University in Guapo, AZ, have produced a breakthrough in the coalification of natural gas (CNG). Professor Horst Graben, Director of the GCI, announced a breakthrough in the carbonization of desulfurized natural gas. Graben said that using existing rail infrastructure to transport bulk carbonized natural gas would be more economically feasible than building gas pipelines to remaining coal fired power plants. He went on to say that plants burning this new fuel would not generate water vapor, eliminating a source of corrosion. The conversion from coal to CNG would require minimal modification of equipment.

Graben also disclosed a new process for the capture of CO2 and its direct incorporation into beer and soft drinks. Graben said that CO2-capture breweries and soft drink bottling plants could be built alongside the CNG power plants. The plans call for power plant exhaust to be piped across the fence to the beverage plants for immediate CO2 capture, eliminating the need for storage. Major bottling companies have already expressed interest.

The GCI plans to start up a pilot-scale plant in Confounded, Montana, in the second quarter of 2024. A 100 million metric ton per year plant is currently in the design phase.

The Dirty Bomb Threat

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Russia sent a letter to the United Nations accusing Ukraine of preparing to use a ‘dirty bomb’ in their battle with Russia. Western countries have claimed that this is nothing but a transparent attempt by Russia to provide a pretext for their own use of a dirty bomb or some other offensive action.

This issue resembles the matter of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that the Bush administration in the US contrived as a pretext for taking down Saddam Hussein. A great many innocent people died and we damaged our moral authority in the world by that and other wars. It was an obvious lie to a great many Americans and allies yet the Bush administration went forward with the invasion. No WMDs were found.

According to Wikipedia, a dirty bomb is a conventional explosive packed with radioactive material that, on detonation, disperses the dangerous material in the target area. Such a thing could be made portable or assembled on site. It is not to be confused with a nuclear bomb. A dirty bomb blast would be a radiological calamity wherever it is set off as well as downwind of the explosion. Being non-nuclear, dispersion by a conventional explosive would be extremely limited in range in terms of blast effects, but intensely radioactive. As with any sudden generation of dust and smoke, there would be a plume of radioactive material (RAM) extending downwind from the release. Water soluble radioactive materials would pollute the watershed and possibly groundwater. Contaminated soil would exclude the area from farming for many decades if not longer. Great harm would befall the biosphere.

Construction of a dirty bomb could be quite problematic for its builders. Assuming the builders of the bomb are not suicidal, collecting RAM, assembling and delivering the bomb could be tricky. On one end of the scale, spent nuclear fuel could be used as the source of RAM. Assembly could be as simple as packing explosives around a container of RAM. To prevent serious exposure to the workers, there would have to be some kind of shielding present during the handling of the RAM. On the lower end, a small RAM source from a medical device could be used. Whatever the case, the containment must be fragile enough to rupture in the explosion but dense enough to provide some level of shielding for the handlers.

The harmful effects of a dirty bomb would be both radiological and psychological. On the psychological end, it is sure to cause dread fear in the general population and sway public sentiment toward one side or the other. Importantly, its use would be releasing the nuclear weapons genie from its bottle. It would lower the threshold and allow war planners everywhere to reconsider their own use of nuclear strategy and tactics because a precedent has been set. Once the genie is out, there is no putting it back, or so the saying goes.

In all of the war gaming and planning NATO has done over the decades, I wonder how much attention has been given to responding to nuclear conflict between non-NATO states? What should the NATO countries do if other actors engage in nuclear conflict? As always, it depends on the circumstances.

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I have chosen to avoid using the term “explosive device” because I feel it has a certain sanitizing effect. A thing that is meant to cause death and destruction by the explosive release of energy is just a f*cking bomb with all of the meaning and negative connotation associated with the word. Even grudging admiration for someone’s cleverness should not be awarded for putting together a “device.”

Gaussling’s (n+1)th Epistle to the Bohemians: Biden’s Student Loan Assistance

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Wow. There is a whole lot of pissin’ and moanin’ out there about Biden’s student loan payment program. A lot of it is bubbling to the surface like rotten egg gas in the mud pots of Facebook and Twitter. That wriggling libertarian tapeworm is deeply and firmly attached to the innards of a great many people.

I’m not going to waste precious heart beats trying to explain why a civilization should aid and encourage higher education. It should be obvious.

In an earlier chapter of American history, I graduated with a BA in chemistry owing $265 back in 1984. The whole time I had at least 2 jobs simultaneously and in two cities for part of that time. It is what I had to do to graduate without accumulating a lot of student loan debt. Later, in grad school, I received tuition remission and a stipend to study for a PhD. This is/was common for chemistry graduate students. The only cost for the ordeal was time, a divorce and my sanity.

Since that time tuition, student housing/rent, fees and other expenses have grown astronomically while wages and grants have not. State funding of colleges and universities has shifted from grants in favor of guaranteed student loans. The reprobates in congress have also passed laws that make escape from student loan payments through bankruptcy impossible.

As it has turned out, my generation of Baby Boomers has benefitted immensely from lower tuition in our time. Today, the picture for students is quite different. Student loan debts are drowning a great many people. We lived in a time that funded student aid with grants and scholarships that are either not available now or they didn’t grow with tuition increases. Today’s students are unable to save for house down payments or otherwise spend on other goods and services. It might even affect who you marry. Why marry into enormous long-term debt?

For many students, not signing the loan papers was equivalent to giving up on their dream of a better life. There are indeed plenty of jobs not requiring a college degree that can lead to a comfortable life. Starting your own business is not for everyone. We can’t all be a Bill Gates because ground fertile enough for a paradigm shift is fairly scarce.

Now, there is a chorus of indignant voices hissing that “I paid my debts- why shouldn’t you? Why should I pay for your debt?” I can’t argue with that except to say that canceling some fraction of student loan debt is reimbursement of what should have been tuition assistance in the first place. The situation shouldn’t have arisen to trigger people. The sum of $10,000 amounts to $2500 per year for 4 years. This is a reimbursement for a modest yearly tuition grant.

Simple PFAS Destruction Process Disclosed

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An article titled Low-temperature mineralization of perfluorocarboxylic acids, Dichtel and Houk, et al., Science, 18 August 2022, Vol 377, Issue 6608, pp. 839-845, DOI: 10.1126/science.abm8868, came out yesterday with a method for defluorination and chain scission of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Blessedly, the article is available without charge.

The article describes the mineralization of reactive perfluorocarboxylic anions with NaOH in water and dimethylsulfoxide, DMSO, at 80 to 120 C and ambient pressure.

Ok. If the prefixes “per” and “poly” are unknown to you, read below, otherwise skip ahead.

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First, some clarification of the name “PFAS” for you non-chemists out there. The “P” in PFAS stands for either prefix “poly” or “per”. Both prefixes appear in common use. The prefix “per” is used to abbreviate the name when some atom or fragment is attached at every possible alkyl (see below) carbon connection point in a molecule or specified fragment of the molecule. The much lengthier proper name would have a number of the position of each separate fluorine atom on the molecule. “Per” and “poly” saves everyone from having to trip over a great many tongue-twisting syllables.

Hydrocarbons consist of only hydrogen atoms on a carbon skeleton. Hydrocarbon carbon atoms can have 0 to 3 hydrogen atoms attached to each skeleton atom. The exception would be methane, CH4, which has 4 hydrogen atoms attached. “Alkyl” refers to a subclass of hydrocarbon fragments or molecules that are absent multiple bonds between atoms of a carbon skeleton. A molecule with a carbon skeleton having no multiple bonds between carbon atoms and linked to hydrogen atoms only is called an “alkane”. An alkane fragment that is connected to something else is called an “alkyl” group.

Gasp! So, a perfluoroalkyl molecule or fragment would have 2 or more of its hydrogen atoms replaced with 2 or more fluorine atoms on a given carbon atom (see definition below).

From Wikipedia “According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): “PFASs are defined as fluorinated substances that contain at least one fully fluorinated methyl or methylene carbon atom (without any H/Cl/Br/I atom attached to it), i.e. with a few noted exceptions, any chemical with at least a perfluorinated methyl group (–CF3) or a perfluorinated methylene group (–CF2–) is a PFAS.“

The prefix “poly” is much simpler. It is meant to indicate that the word it is attached to has many units of something, as in polyfluoroalkyl, which means many fluorine atoms attached to alkyl carbon atoms. Or it could refer to a string of repeating units as in a polymer.

Outside of the narrow PFAS world, the prefix per in “perfluoroalkyl” would indicate in common usage that the alkyl fragment is completely saturated with fluorine atoms.

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If we were at the bar during happy hour slamming well drinks after a long day of shaking separatory funnels, washing glassware and trying to vacuum distill something useful out of tar, someone might have groused that the PFAS destruction process is simply a process where you heat the piss out of a DMSO/water mixture of NaOH and PFAS to destruction. Ok, the word they used is “mineralization” rather than the more chaotic sounding words “destruction” or “digestion”. Everyone has thermally decomposed a reaction mixture in the past. We would pause for a moment, shrug our shoulders and say “well, of course that works”. DMSO is a highly polar, high-boiling solvent which supports the formation of ionic decomposition products at elevated temperature. Kendall Houk even did some snazzy DFT calculations on decomposition mechanisms. Now, that is how to develop a new approach to decomposition! Get out the big stick of quantum mechanical computing power and swing it around! The rascals Dichtel and Houk worked it out first so we’d raise our glasses and drink in their honor. Here’s to you, boys and girls!

As we stagger out to the Uber for the ride home, somebody mutters “I wonder how far along the patent application is and who will be the assignee?”

Whoa there Texas, simmer down big fella

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So, it turns out that I did time in Texas- 22 months to be exact. As a postdoc in a large central Texas city with the initials S.A. The natives were friendly, if not a little obsessed with the daily level of the Edwards Aquafer. If you absolutely have to live in Texas, SA is a decent choice. I do have to fault them on their choice of US Rep. Louie Gomert. An actual gibbering dunce if there ever was one. Imagine what kind of people were passed over in making that choice? But I digress.

On to the point. The Texas State Board of Educators recently made the news regarding their decision NOT to replace the word “slavery” with “involuntary relocation”. Evidently this antiseptic language was floated by a curriculum study group. The board, to their credit, unanimously directed the work group to revisit the language. Astute choice, folks.

According to the article in the San Antonio Current, GOP lawmakers (are there any other kind in Tejas?) are trying to shield students from discomfort in the classroom as with the mercurial issue of Critical Race Theory. Previously, in 2015, headlines were made when it was discovered that enslaved Africans brought to the US by the slave trade were described as “workers” in a social studies textbook. Sanitizing language on slavery is the first step to eliminating its tragic history altogether.

Replacement Theory on Ice

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I’ve been marveling at the current social phenomenon of “Replacement Theory” and all of the fear and loathing these words can generate. Anything that could plausibly rile up white folks is being scooped up and slung at the wall to see what sticks. The Republican fear machine needs and thrives on this kind of stuff. Fox News “Speaker to Animals” Tucker Carlson has been slopping it around the swill bucket lately as is customary for him to do. It’s become a meme with news coverage like a new Disney on Ice show.

Peering out from under my rock along the riverbank, it appears to me that there are a great many citizens in the U.S. of A. who enjoy nothing more than to get lathered up and vent their rage at the bogyman of the month. Some folks seem happiest and most alive when they are really hacked off.

I wonder how these folks will react when someone reminds them that social replacement is not new. After all, what happened in the forced removal of the Native Americans over the last 400 years? How many countries have we attempted to reconfigure to something more politically subservient by force or subterfuge? History is one long, highly blemished series of one people replacing another. Notice the irony? Historically, most change has been quite violent. Many nations have been complicit in the forced swapping of ethnic groups in the social and economic order in someone else’s land. It seems to be a natural turn of events.

If it is happening to the US right now, it seems to be relatively peaceful and quiet, except for the angry white nationalists out shooting people. More than a little change going on is merit-based selection in job placement and by the hard work of immigrants. If you are angry about being replaced by non-whites, first try not to murder people. Murder is the answer to a whole slew of poorly formed questions.

The Idiot and Poststructuralism

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ANNOUNCEMENT

Colloquium at The Center for Contemporary Idiocy, Rand Paul Auditorium

Poltroon University, Guapo AZ

The Center for Contemporary Idiocy is pleased to announce a lecture and panel discussion on “The Demise of Roe v Wade: Will Anti-Abortion Single Issue Voters Continue to Vote Republican?”

The Idjota Award for Graduate Studies in Western Idiocracy will be given after the speaker.

Guest Speaker: Dr. Horst Statek van Klingenn, Distinguished Fellow, The Institute for Poststructuralism and Malign Idiocy, Pan Handle College, OK.

6:30 PM Refreshments

7:00 PM Speaker

8:06 PM Panel Discussion

From PC to Woke-ness

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Linked here is an earlier essay on the evolution of political correctness (PC) as I have witnessed it. Before the epithet of “woke-ness” came along there was PC. In the early 2000’s rancid and cynical criticism of PC was trotted out and displayed as some kind of analysis by ultraconservative broadcasters and Christian evangelicals. PC as an epithet was useful for casting fuzzy accusations and to infer a kind of pathetic naivety to the mindset of progressive people. The accusation was difficult to counter and it gained wide spread use.

To counter the accusation of PC as a negative, one had to convince the accuser that fair treatment for all was a good thing and that the use of racial and ethnic slurs was a bad thing, not an unconstitutional imposition on free speech or an implied slur on white people. Defending PC in practice meant holding the accuser’s attention long enough to step through the morals and logic of PC- a tough exercise in listening for some people. It is another example of how it is easier to destroy than to build.