Category Archives: Current Events

Deutsche Bank’s Sankey: Simple Scarcity Driving up Fuel Prices

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As everyone knows, the price of gasoline in the USA has been steadily marching up into the low US$3.00 per gallon range to achieve all-time high pricing.  Reliable sources state that the price run-up is due to simple shortage of supply. According to testimony from energy analyst Paul Sankey of Deutsche Bank, the US refines 17 million barrels of petroleum per day against a demand of 22 million barrels per day.  An interesting analysis can be found at the Oil Drum. 

We are in a very precarious position here. An oil shock caused by a catastrophic loss of refining capacity will result in a wild price spike (some estimate US$100/bbl) while gasoline is in the mid $3.00 range already and a major perturbation to the economy- or worse.  Unfortunately, we are bogged down in the ill-conceived GW-II, the second of the energy wars. 

Melamine in Pet Food

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The issue of melamine in pet food has come up again as more lots of pet food are found to be contaminated with it.  At least a few news outlets have published a proposed reason for this contamination by a monomer from another industrial sector.  Melamine is very nitrogen rich- 6 equivalents per mole- so if you spike grain products with it you can cause the nitrogen analysis to read higher than it normally would.  Protein content is one of the factors in the pricing of animal feed, so an additive that would contribute to an uptick in nitrogen content would raise the price or even make a non-saleable lot of feed qualify for sale. 

The nitrogen test that most people think of is the Kjeldahl test.  It is a digestion-distillation-titration method that affords total nitrogen.  This test is still in wide use and is inexpensive to conduct.  A friend who has an Ag Lab still does the test on a bank of burners in his lab for total nitrogen in feed samples.

The practice of adulteration of foodstuffs not limited to China.  As an undergraduate I worked in a dairy processing plant lab and we had to screen for several kinds of mischief.  Dilution of milk with water is an old trick, given that pricing is on a per pound basis, so we had to test each raw milk tanker for total solids content.  We also tested for pH and temperature.

Neutralization of partially fermented raw milk with NaOH was also practiced at one time, so we taste tested each tanker as well since neutralization could not mask off-flavor.  Finally, we had to carefully screen raw milk for residual antibiotics.  Mastitis is an inflamation of the udder and has many causes. One aggravating factor is the common practice of milking ol’ Bessie three times a day.  A sick cow has to be taken off-line to recover. This reduces the productivity of the cow.

Farmers were often tempted to give sick cows a big jolt of antibiotic and get her milking again before the time needed to fully recover and clear the system of antibiotic. This could lead to antibiotic contamination in the tanker.  We performed two tests for penicillin at our plant. The microbiological test we performed was the Bacillus stearothermophilus disk assay. The other was a radiological assay called the Charm test utilizing C-14.  This test could be performed in 20 minutes, whereas the B. stearothermophilus test took 6 hours or so.  The newer Charm tests now take only a few minutes.

Residual antibiotics found in dairy products on the Grocers shelf could put a dairy out of business for repeated infractions. The state health authorities took (take) a dim view of penicillin in milk.

BLEVE- Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion

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There is kind of fire behaviour called a BLEVE– Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion.  A BLEVE is what happens, for instance, when a closed container of flammable liquid is exposed to strong heating.  It can be caused by an external source, like a pool of burning liquid around the container, or it can result from a runaway reaction within a drum, cylinder, or tank.  The internal pressure builds up more rapidly than it can be vented and the containment fails, often explosively. It is interesting to note from the above link that boiling action of the liquid phase in the container absorbs energy and has a cooling effect, but there may come a point where the vapor pressure rise above the liquid exceeds the capacity of the relief discharge capacity and the vessel fails, discharging liquid and vapor across the burn zone.  At minimum, discharge and ignition will lead to a large flare, or if conditions are right, an actual detonation of the fuel/air mix could happen over a relatively large space.

These things often begin with some kind of tank or tanker accident (link updated 6/10/16) resulting in a discharge and ignition of flammable liquid.  As responders arrive they find a burning pool under or next to the tank(er).  Naturally, firemen and bystanders try to help those who may be hurt. As the minutes tick away and the fire becomes more aggressive and the tank gets hotter, the firefighters get their equipment in place and attempt to cool the tanker and suppress the fire.  Suddenly the tank fails and there is a prompt bulk discharge of liquid and vapor yielding a large fireball which may include an explosive shock, flying metal debris and a dangerous heat pulse.  It is at this point that the surviving bystanders and responders see the error of their ways.

Containers of flammable liquids rarely explode in a symmetric fashion so the container or its fragments are likely to be sent flying at high velocity, possibly spewing flammable material as it moves.  Even a relatively small volume of flammable liquid dispersed explosively can fill a large surrounding space with a fireball.

All chemical plants have their protocols for emergency response.  It is important for those in charge to recognize an incipient BLEVE and respond accordingly.  But even academic chemists should familiarize themselves with the phenomenon.  A fire in the lab engulfing closed containers of flammable solvents is extremely dangerous and very quickly firefighting may become your last earthly act, especially without personal protective equipment.  It is easy to under estimate the violence of these things.

Every lab person needs to look inward and decide what their personal limit is for dropping the fire extinguisher and running for the exit.  In my sophomore organic labs, the seed I planted in the students mind was this: The main purpose of a fire extinguisher was to fight your way to an exit.

Happy 100th Birthday Albert Hoffmann!!

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Albert Hoffmann, the discoverer of LSD, turned 100 years old this year on Juanary 11th.  Happy Birthday, Albert!  Scienceblogs.com relates the story of Hoffmann’s first deliberate LSD trip on April 19th, 1943.  You might recall that Hoffmann was the Sandoz chemist who stumbled upon the psychotropic activity of lysergic acid diethylamide.  

Just this last week, the medical journal The Lancet called for an end to the “demonization” of psychedelic drugs, according to Guardian Unlimited.  The motivation behind the editorial in the Lancet was to urge a loosening of taboo’s connected with the use of psychedelic compounds.  The widespread criminalization of psychedelics has made research with these interesting molecules quite problematic. 

Perhaps the day will come when such materials are decriminalized and it will be possible to visit a psychedelic spa where one could go to have a safe dosage administered by qualified staff.  But it wouldn’t be all fun and games, though.  While the euphoric experience can be prolonged and profoundly vivid, there is a dark side.  An account of the experience of the psychiatrist Werner Stoll is described in Chapter 4 of Hoffmanns book “LSD. My Problem Child”.

Hoffmann and Sandoz would watch their discovery move from a psychiatric adjunct to a full fledged inebriant adopted by a counter culture movement.  In his book, Hoffmann laments-

    This joy at having fathered LSD was tarnished after more than ten years of uninterrupted scientific research and medicinal use when LSD was swept up in the huge wave of an inebriant mania that began to spread over the Western world, above all the United States, at the end of the 1950s. It was strange how rapidly LSD adopted its new role as inebriant and, for a time, became the number-one inebriating drug, at least as far as publicity was concerned. The more its use as an inebriant was disseminated, bringing an upsurge in the number of untoward incidents caused by careless, medically unsupervised use, the more LSD became a problem child for me and for the Sandoz firm.

    It was obvious that a substance with such fantastic effects on mental perception and on the experience of the outer and inner world would also arouse interest outside medical science, but I had not expected that LSD, with its unfathomably uncanny, profound effects, so unlike the character of a recreational drug, would ever find worldwide use as an inebriant. I had expected curiosity and interest on the part of artists outside of medicine-performers, painters, and writers-but not among people in general. After the scientific publications around the turn of the century on mescaline-which, as already mentioned, evokes psychic effects quite like those of LSD-the use of this compound remained confined to medicine and to experiments within artistic and literary circles. I had expected the same fate for LSD. And indeed, the first non-medicinal self-experiments with LSD were carried out by writers, painters, musicians, and other intellectuals.

Today, psychedelic substances are considered to be drugs of abuse and their use will lead to a long stay at the Gray Bar Hotel. Our Puritanical heritage seems everlasting. But rather than wallow in pity for my unenlightened brothers and sisters, I look forward to a brighter future where one could sit in a licensed psychotropic suite and explore the deepest recesses of consciousness brought out in full non-linear display, say, while listening to music. Everybody associates acid rock with LSD. That’s too easy. I’ve often wondered what it’d be like to listen to Leon Redbone in an altered state of consciousness.  Kinda curious about what a baritone sax does to a brain on acid.  Or David Bowie- Major Tom.  I’m showing my age. 

Yet another mass shooting in our USA

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The news of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech just seems to get worse as the day wears on.  There aren’t words to describe it. 

After the grisly scene in Blacksburg is cleaned up and the bodies are buried, we’ll once again switch on the TV and watch programming glamorizing gun-toting tough guys and violence. Not a night goes by on television where some plot isn’t based on the menacing of women by crazed or angry men, most with guns.  Some people will solve problems with guns and others will cause problems with guns.  The message is that guns bring satisfaction and command respect. Just look at the very title of the series The Sopranos and listen to the lyrics.  “Woke up this mornin’ and got myself a gun …”

Maybe there is no causal connection between entertainment and what this shooter did.  But I cannot help but believe that the more or less constant exposure to violence in our entertainment doesn’t dull our sensibilities and lower our threshold for what constitutes acceptable behaviour.  Regardless, we have to start somewhere and cleaning up our tastes in entertainment is relatively painless.  We need to create less demand for this crude stuff.

Obviously, the shooter is responsible for the murders, not the inanimate steel mechanism.  But the common fascination we have with the gun and it’s stylized, even mythical, application means that this mechanical device has some kind of hold on us.  Its ease of use and its ability to deliver death from a great distance makes it possible for anyone to deem themselves a “warrier” for a few minutes.

We are horrified by such violence when it is real. But we entertain ourselves with painstakingly elaborate dramatizations of it.  We are gratified to watch fictional characters engage in gunplay with bad guys.  We cheer as fictional cops rough up suspects because, as we all know, bad guys really shouldn’t have rights. 

There is no mysterious or complex phenomenon to sort out here. Our American culture has a form of fragmented personality disorder with respect to gun violence.  I don’t know if it’ll do a damned bit of good, but we need to come down from the saturation level of violence in our entertainment and recreation. The first thing we must do is to remove a bit of the glamor of gunplay. 

We don’t have to give up our guns.  But we do need to develop a new viewpoint or an advanced ethos about them. We need new icons and archetypes.  It is time to retire CSI and The Sopranos as popular iconography.  We must find better ways to fulfill our self image and need for power besides being handy with a gun.  How do other societies do it?  Any suggestions??

Here is an interesting link to a rebuttal in the Daily Kos written by someone said to be from VT.

Cold War II

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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.

Clancy’s World of Spooks

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It is like a disease. I find myself drawn to Tom Clancy novels.  I picked up Rainbow Six the other day. Other than his Op-Center series, I think I’ve read most of his books.  Clancy is one of the most successful writers in this genre.  Airport bookshops have been good for him.  When I was in the travelling phase of my career, his books were great for passing the time in airports.  Millions of us have read his books.

And millions of us have read Clancy’s idealized interpretation of how the clandestine world operates.  I won’t indulge in a superficial crtitque of the genre or his writing. But I would like to suggest that a population of readers who have followed the characters and themes of his immensely popular books might have developed certain impressions or even, shall we say, expectations, of the those who practice this tradecraft.

After reading his highly detailed and richly woven stories, one might develop the idea- subconsciously, mind you- that the clandestine services were capable of doing anything they set out to do.  Could it be that decades of Clancy’s stories have adjusted the expectations of countless readers in tems of what was possible in the world of the black arts? Could it be that such fiction has inadvertantly prepared our minds in such a way as to accept the assertions of government leaders when they tell us that hostile states have certain threatening capabilities? Surely, with all of the assets and talent at our disposal, when our elected leadership says that a threat exists, can’t we be certain that the conclusion was based on well placed human assets and has been through a series of tests and filters to verify the accuracy and magnitude of the threat? 

For those in power, the notion of “expertise” is not only useful, it may even be critical.  We all want to know that our safety is in the hands of experts. It is a comfort thing. Leaders need to be able to assure the population that experts are on the job and all will be well. 

I would suggest that there is no such thing as “expertise” as an intellectual destination.  There is only a continuum of confusion.  And some of us are more confused than others.

Keystone Cops in Boston

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The mind still boggles at the recent cartoonish response of Boston authorities to the “viral” marketing campaign by Turner Broadcasting.  Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network evidently sponsored a targeted marketing campaign for its “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” program.  In doing so, their 20-something hirelings violated local sign ordinances by hanging electronic signs on bridges and that is where it stood until police were called and one of the displays was “disarmed” by a controlled bomb squad explosion.

The tipping point came when someone looked at the sign and saw a circuit board, wires and something that turned out to be a battery.  Evidently trained in the school of television drama bomb squadding, the officer on the scene triggered the terror response protocol.  God help us if this local constable ever looks in his computer and sees wires, capacitors, and other mechanisms.

I have witnessed much smaller versions of this first hand.  What appears to be an emergency leads to the arrival of the police and the fire department. This is the part where civil liberties fly out the window, and often enough, sensibility as well. The police establish a perimeter and secure the “scene”.  If the incident involves materials unknown to the police, then they will notify the fire department and then pull the trigger on the hazmat team.  If there is an object that seems suspicious, then they may trigger the bomb squad people. 

Obviously, the fine people who serve the public in the capacity of emergency response or law enforcement are trained and dedicated to their jobs. But what happens is that these people are given precious little latitude in their range of responses to “situations”.  What happens then is that they tend to do what is called erring on the side of safety, which means that when in doubt, call the bomb squad or the hazmat people. 

But when a situation leads to the arrival of the bomb squad, then the natural conclusion of the authorities is that whatever caused this response looks like a crime and should be so investigated. So, irrespective of the merits of the officer-on-the-scenes judgement, there might arise a presumption of foul play and the whole law enforcement apparatus is activated to supply evidence to the district attorney for the filing of charges on the alleged wrongdoer.  In fact one might cynically argue that, especially in these dubious circumstances, it is in the best interest of your career to be able to rationalize the release of these resources as a response to criminal activity. 

So, these two hapless fools who hung the signs in Boston are now at the pointy end of the law enforcement stick and the authorities seem to be bent on saving face through the exercise of grim and officious talk of terrorism. What a mess.

Astronaut burns up on re-entry to life

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The sad story of astronaut Lisa Nowak continues to unfold.  This thing seems to have many layers of complexity to it. It is interesting to see how the news media have approached it. People in the news business seem to have a set of tools in their bag from which they shape stories.  Some reporters are grilling NASA about fraternizing policy while others focus on the lurid detail about the diaper.  Perhaps someone will eventually make the connection with the Mercury program and how the astronauts wore diapers on these early flights.  It is just a concession to the pragmatics of long endurance travel. Pretty clever, really.  But regardless of her clever determination, using violence to resolve this kind of conflict has no valid excuse. 

It is rather painful to watch.

S. 3930: Always certain but frequently wrong.

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For those who may scoff at the possibility of the DoJ or other agencies abusing secrecy in the courts, have a look at this disturbing story.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/#116119665216036725

The author of this is now a law school prof. It is a chilling account of gaming the system to intimidate opposing attorneys in litigation involving evidence designated as secret. Tamanaha makes the following point-

“A thread that runs through this story is that the government actors involved were not necessarily bad people—they were simply doing what they thought was necessary to defend their country, and they used this end to justify their extreme conduct. That’s the problem. When combined with power and with an unwavering conviction in the correctness of one’s conduct, this mindset—which the Bush Administration oozes—can lead to terrible abuses.”

After you have digested this tale, think about the general case. Granting the executive branch the authority to take actions that are not subject to checks and balances, i.e., rendition, is a step in the direction of autocracy. Our elected legislative branch has abdicated their responsibility to apply checks and balances. It is an astounding development. What is to prevent other nations from adopting the same posture? Pull a suspect out of line at customs at the airport and call them an enemy combatant. Now they have no right of habeas corpus. No court can demand that the person be accounted for. They have no right to inspect the evidence used against them. They quietly go to an undisclosed location. Is this America we are talking about? It is now, thanks to the US Senate.

All of this is being administered by people who are cut from a certain kind of cloth. I know a few of them and they tend to be the bane of my life. They are always certain in their judgements. But when they finally cycle out of your life, you see that they were just as prone to error as anyone. There has to be some metaphor for this, some mythic character or an archetype who exemplifies this flaw.