After viewing an alarming report on YouTube concerning the shady situation with Microsoft’s business strategy in general and Microsoft Windows 11 in particular, I’ve decided to cross the Rubicon to Linux Ubuntu. It’s not just about what I’ve learned about Microsoft’s intrusion into my personal computer’s files. My latest update of MS Outlook ab.so.lute.ly stinks. My relearning and expectations of Windows 11 Outlook is contaminated by my prior familiarity with the previous rev. The blurred familiarity of the new version is twisted with years of habit and expectations. I’ve had enough.
I’ve been using Microsoft products since the Jurassic age of home computing, ca 1986. I refer to both “IBM” machines of that age and Apple’s McIntosh. As a result, both my entire professional and personal computer lives are deeply invested in Microsoft products, MS Word especially. I’ve heard that transfer compatibility going from Word documents to whatever Linux app is problematic, except for pdf files.
My plan is to experiment with an inexpensive laptop from Amazon with Linux Ubuntu already installed. The goal is to make a parallel assessment of Ubuntu with my personal and consulting work on MS Windows.
Remember the scene from Saving Private Ryan where a German soldier is killing an American soldier by struggling to push his bayonet into his chest on the upper floor of a building? While the German soldier is pushing the blade closer and closer, all the while he is attempting to quell the American’s panic with soft words, shushing and a pleading for him to stop resisting. It’s very disturbing and reminds me of the banality of evil.
Many companies, including Microsoft, are constructing business models that remind me of this disturbing scene. They are encouraging customers to switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11 by aging out Windows 10 updates. In doing so, Windows has become a subscription service rather than your personal property in the privacy of your hard drive. Instead of buying MS windows once, you are now paying for a subscription and allowing MS to examine your files. What do they do with what they may find? Overall, they want to turn your proclivities and interests into cash through selective advertising and sales of marketing data to third parties.
They are trying to force users to use their cloud storage where they will have access to all of our data. Worse yet, their AI “helper” encourages users to ask for help that reveals what the user is thinking. That help can be in the form of rewriting your text or actually producing content for the user. The AI system resides in one of their data centers and who knows what kind of analysis and business planning that results in.
Why is it that many people seem to believe that government is inherently bad and businesses are inherently good, or at least preferable? Why distrust government yet throw your faith into free market capitalism? At the very least, the US government as it has been operated up to now is often regulated to afford at least some transparency and accountability. Does business have such transparency? Politicians can, in theory, be voted out for corruption and malfeasance. But what about the shitheads who control a great many large corporations? Other than the limp-d**k approach of refusing to buy their products and services, what other leverage is there? For example, recent history is full of examples of corporations badly polluting the environment, but even with proof in hand, citizens must fight for years at high personal cost to force accountability on the polluters. Or, recall the trouble with Purdue Pharmaceuticals and their potent and addictive OxyContin. They knowingly profited from their product for years fully knowing it’s addictive potential. Even widespread addiction and death weren’t trouble enough to cause a prompt regulatory response from the gov’t. Here both Purdue and government officials were painfully reluctant to respond. Finally, there was the battle between Erin Brockovich and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) over hexavalent chromium groundwater contamination in Hinkley, CA. Detection of hexavalent chromium isn’t difficult, but nailing down accountability is, especially when it is a citizen vs a large corporation.
This approach is really about shooting fish in a barrel and is increasingly appearing on social media with advertisers pushing subscriptions rather than outright purchases. Amazon does it as well with certain food stuffs. I understand the business motivation to exchange a single larger sale for monthly payments of smaller dollar amounts over time. This works best when charges are hidden in your credit card statements disguised as lengthy character strings rather than intelligible names. Also, that particular human frailty of losing track of what you are paying for by credit card is a real issue for people. Do we actually think that the C-Suite knobs who oversee their sales operations haven’t thought of this? They know exactly what they are doing.
Ostensibly, the “genius” of the free market is to maximize the efficient use of capital. Obviously, history bears (or bares?) out that there is much evidence for this assertion. The downside of this is that decisions contrary to your personal choice are made by others who decide what efficiencies that you will pay for while they retain their margins.
Economics isn’t a type of physics resting on the space-time continuum. It is a social science that uses some math for persuasion.
Do you want to produce a product that results in a few single-item sales of a dollar each or a product that produces a larger number of nickels over time? Obviously, it depends on the product.
Like hundreds of millions of others, I have helped to keep Microsoft afloat and remain a great investment for their stockholders. We’ve done our part. But now it is time to say “so long and thanks for all of the fish.”
To all the readers of Lamentations on Chemistry, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, С Рождеством, 圣诞快乐, عيد ميلاد مجيد, Feliz Navidad, חג מולד שמח, Wesołych Świąt, Krismasi Njema, (کریسمس مبارک), मेरी क्रिसमस, Happy Hanukkah, Gleðileg Jól, Maligayang Pasko, Vrolijk Kerstfeest, and 메리 크리스마스, Wadda Din Mubarak, Happy Kwanzaa, Feliz Natal, Happy New Year, Peace, Love and (fill in the blank).
Be of good cheer! Beneath all of the chaos, turmoil and ill will rests a beautiful world of natural wonder and fascination. Stop occasionally and take in the views of our gorgeous planet, ponder our amazing human consciousness and let your good will wrap around the web of life.
Putin has said on numerous occasions that the West wants what Russia has. Seriously? You mean permafrost? -61 oF winters. A border with China? A multiethnic and antagonistic population? A shortage of warm, deepwater ports? A long history of brutal authoritarianism?? Its gleaming history with nuclear energy and vast stretches of land contaminated with radioactive soil. Yes, we in the West stare longingly at Russia for this from time to time … NOT!
Oh yes, Pootie-Poot (nickname by George W. Bush) must mean natural resources like petroleum, platinum group metals, gold, titanium, uranium, diamonds, etc. These are valuable natural resources but at what cost for a conquering power. Too high by half would be the conclusion by rational people. Recall the problems Hitler had with Operation Barbarossa. Or the disaster Napolean fell upon with his ill-conceived invasion of Russia. Like any modern state, Russia has much in the way of weapons to bear upon its enemies. But what Russia has in great abundance are brutal winters and a muddy spring season to immobilize invaders.
Like any authoritarian worth his salt, Putin continues to make the case for tightening personal liberty in exchange for layers of “state security”. Citizens have been conditioned to avoid politics in exchange for politics avoiding citizens. It seems to work.
Like nearly everywhere else, Russia is populated by good and decent folks. I’ve been there and have experienced generous hospitality from ordinary citizens in their cramped apartments. How we could be mortal enemies is beyond me.
The people we now call Russians are descended from tough people who survived conquest and occupation by many hostile invaders over the many centuries. Somehow, they even chased out the Mongols and later overcame the mechanized invasion of Nazis. As the Red Army chased the Nazis westward in WWII, they burned down their own villages and even executed Russian citizens who failed to fight and die. My Russian language professor was a Ukrainian kid whose family evacuated Ukraine for Europe in WWII to flee the advancing Red Army.
The title of this post asks, “Who on God’s Green Earth Wants to Invade Russia?” I’d offer that to try would be at best to invite a nuclear exchange, terrible hardships and losses for any invasion force. It would be a supremely bad decision. And even if an invader prevails, what have they gained? A population dedicated to guerrilla warfare and civil disobedience. Sounds like a nightmare.
The consequences of invasion and occupation of any large region would produce guerrilla warfare and civil disobedience by the surviving conquered population.
The West could benefit by making it known out loud to the Russian people and the Kremlin that we understand that an invasion or occupation of Russia by a foreign power would be a suicidal calamity for any invader. The usual rancid Kremlin propaganda must be countered with words of strength, peace and prosperity for all people. We invite Russia to be a member in the community of peaceful states who participate in open commerce and tourism.
Yes, it’s bloody obvious and is itself a kind of propaganda we should be repeating loudly and endlessly. Effective propaganda must be repeated and drummed into people’s thought processes. The US and Europe should be repeating the message of friendship and peace in order to knock down Kremlin doors, grab the bastards by the throat and give them a big wet kiss. It would be a peace and love offensive. It is the one thing we haven’t tried yet.
Last week, this blog saw an unusual spike in traffic—roughly 350 visits higher than normal. Each visit appeared to be for a single post, with no clear theme among them. My best guess? An AI platform was scraping my content for something specific.
Suddenly, I feel a renewed sense of accountability for what I’ve written. What if—gasp—a sentence was inaccurate, or a sarcastic remark too obscure for most readers? The responsibility could be enormous! Think of the children!
The content choices lie somewhere between the bookends of accurate and complete fabrication. I’d rather be accused of being boring than being found in an untruth.
How does this mesh with my anonymity? Well, a handful of people know my identity and their respect is important to me. Eventually I will reveal my identity and suddenly the truth and accuracy (and spelling) of my 1700 posts will be forever connected to my real name. Skin in the game.
Howard!! Whatever shall I do??
Disclosure-
Very occasionally I will write some fictional content, and it should be apparent as fiction from both the content itself, and the key words attached to the post. The example would be my posts on the fictional Poltroon University in Guapo, Arizona. I do enjoy the occasional jab at the culture of higher education and the institution of science.
However, as a scientist in matters of physical reality, I am dedicated and eager to describe content as truthfully, accurately and mellifluously as possible. When I’m on one of my political jags, I’ll admit to some amount of enhanced emphasis where others have tread more carefully with the source material.
The reason I write and blog is to help me think ideas through. Somehow the act of scribbling down sentences followed by multiple passes in editing is helpful. At any given time I have 20 to 30 unfinished posts languishing in draft space. The open-air aspect of blogging is to assure that I have done my best lest public humiliation, scorn and derision should come my way. Not just in the present, but more so in the future. Writing is thinking. To put it bluntly, there is a fear of publishing something I would regret forever. Absolutely the worst thing I could do as a blogger and as a scientist would be to post indefensible or phony science. Posts with linked references are direct connections to what I view as credible content on the internet. The reader only has to click a link to verify a factual statement thing I made.
Ok, so there is this Harvard professor named Avi Loeb who attracts media attention with his suggestions that a new comet or asteroid may be an alien spaceship, especially if we’re sure that it is from outside our solar system. Any given new object arriving from “way out there” has the possibility of being made and operated by extraterrestrials. Yes, it is a remote possibility, but still non-zero.
What gets my attention is how his pronouncements of possible alien spaceships are leapt upon by media who publish and promote with breathless and fanciful headlines. Ok, media are in a 24 hour or less news cycle and feel the need obligation to publish a story with breathtaking headlines. Or at least the writer of the story intends it will attract the reader’s engagement,
Is the professor just looney or is there method to his madness? Perhaps his personal threshold for signal to noise ratios is set just a bit too low. I just don’t know.
With this, however, the ET credibility gap is bridged by the fact that a professor at Harvard University is making the statement. This affords instant credibility because, as we all know, God himself spends Thursday afternoons at Harvard and what is more sanctified than a tenured Harvard faculty member? In fairness, it must be said that God spends Thursday mornings across town at MIT, though half-assed claims of ETs are a bit rarer from there.
As Carl Sagan or someone else once said, incredible claims require incredible evidence. In this example, where was the incredible evidence? Extremely distant, small and faint objects detectable only in the visible part of the spectrum with very sensitive equipment tend to reveal only faint evidence. Even if some kind of signal can be discriminated, would aliens want to broadcast their appearance to the whole flippin’ solar system straight away?
For myself, if there were aliens strapped inside this object, the more interesting problem is how did they manage to cross interstellar space in a way consistent with sufficient fuel for their propulsion system and critical supplies?
My faint mockery of the Harvard professor is now complete. Time to move on.
Perhaps aliens have picked up our radio transmissions, remembering that TV transmission is also a kind of radio transmission. Amplitude modulated transmissions, AM, would be easiest to investigate since it is only a narrow carrier frequency that is modulated by wave amplitude.
A radio signal modulated in two ways- AM and FM. Source: Wikipedia.
Black and white television used AM for video and FM for sound. AM is the easiest to understand, but the FM signals are quite different. Frequency modulation, FM, takes a fixed carrier frequency and combines it with signal that is near the carrier frequency, but the frequency is modulated in a way that the sum of the carrier and sound frequencies combine in such a way that the combined carrier and sound signals produce peaks and valleys resulting from combining two signals of somewhat different frequencies. The peaks of the carrier frequency end up adding or subtracting with the other signal.
AM receiving equipment has difficulty discriminating between signal by variable amplitude noise. Lightning or other sources of radio frequency energy easily interfere with the clarity of the signal. If you have listened to an AM radio station in stormy weather, you know how interfering lightning can be.
FM, on the other hand, is from the addition of a set carrier frequency plus a variable frequency sound signal. Electrical mechanisms that produce RF noise generally do not produce an FM signal, thus the quiet sound of FM reception.
Interlacing raster scan lines on a TV screen. Alien receivers of TV signals would have to assemble images from an interlacing raster scan signal with a proper sweep frequency across the screen. Image: Wikipedia.
This is a superficial explanationof television. Television images of the Lucy show, or the Three Stooges received by aliens has been speculated on to our great amusement, but we should understand that a transmitted TV signal is generated taking into account of specifically how it will be read. On a monochrome TV receiver screen, the picture is produced by interlacing two half vertical images alternating every 60th of a second so a whole image is received by our retinas every 30th of a second exploiting our persistence of vision to prevent flickering images. Below 30 frames per second, the images begin to flicker. Aiding in this is the fact that the phosphors in the picture tube glow momentarily after the beam has passed. In order to produce images from a radio frequency signal, this method would first have to be recognized then a receiver built by the aliens to “decode” the signal. Also, the aliens would have to recognize that the analog information is visual in nature and presented as an interlaced raster scan on some kind of display. Misinterpretation of our signals as hostile in nature would be avoided, hopefully.
Ok, movie projection just for fun
The passage of movie film through a movie projector is at 24 frames per second but flickering is avoided by projecting each frame twice to give a frame rate of 48. The classic sound of a movie projector results from the advancing of each frame past the shutter, stopping the film momentarily while the shutter rotates in the light beam and shines light through the frame twice. Slack is built into the continuous flow of film through the projector using loops of film above and below the aperture and shutter to allow continuous movement of the film but also stopping for 1/24th of a second so that a steady image is projected twice per frame. The source of the flickering sound is in large part from the upper and lower loops jumping up and down every 1/24th of a second.
If only we’d ship reels of movie film to the aliens, they could better understand us. For starters, I’d suggest a recent Godzilla movie.
The essential parts of a movie projector. Note the loops above and below the shutter. Source: Smithsonian.
In this politically turbulent time, I can’t help but recall a quote from Grover Norquist in 2001. From Liasson, Mara (May 25, 2001). “Conservative advocate”. Morning Edition. NPR.
“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”–Grover Norquist
The anti-government coup that is taking place presently resembles closely an attempt to convert the USA into a libertarian state. {How the Project 2025 elite will tolerate Trump’s authoritarian reflex is unclear.} More than just economics, there is also a component of Christian nationalism as well. From what I know about the John Birch Society, the combination of libertarianism and enthusiastic support from far-right Christian evangelicalism adds up to a theocratic-leaning anti-democracy regime. What’s wrong with minimal government? Some negatives are listed below. The six bullet points are copied directly from Google using the searched under libertarian negatives.
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“Increased inequality: Critics worry that with minimal government intervention and lower taxes, the gap between the wealthy and the poor could widen significantly.
Difficulty addressing social and environmental problems: A philosophy that advocates for very limited government is criticized for being unable to effectively address issues like pollution, climate change, and other negative externalities that require collective action and regulation.
Neglect of public goods and services: The libertarian ideal of minimal government may lead to underfunding or elimination of essential public services, which may negatively impact infrastructure, education, and social welfare programs.
Conditional freedom: Some argue that a purely libertarian framework might make freedom conditional on an individual’s ability to afford certain protections or opportunities, failing to provide a baseline of security for everyone.
Challenges in complex societies: The principles of libertarianism, which often rely on small-scale, community-based reasoning, may struggle to provide adequate solutions for the scale and complexity of modern societies and economies.
Limited safety net: The minimal government model may not provide the necessary social safety net for those who are unable to work or are facing hardship, leaving vulnerable populations without support. “
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What’s appealing about libertarianism? Again, straight from Google and searched under libertarian positives-
“Libertarians advocate the expansion of individual autonomy and political self-determination,
Emphasizing the principles of equality before the law and the protection of civil rights, including the rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice.”
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What’s not to like about libertarianism in the above libertarian positives bullet points? In a more humorous mood, I might joke that libertarianism is the theoretical foundation which supports and normalizes greed. If not here already, we are approaching a new gilded age and Project 2025 will lock it into place. The lion’s share of natural resources and related industry is in the hands of fewer and fewer people and corporations. Theoretical question: Shouldn’t a child today expect that by virtue of being born on this planet expect to share in the resource wealth of this world? Every minute of every day, children are born into a world where its riches have already been hoarded by people or by entities far away.
The world is a hazardous place, and nature has many tricks to kill us. Our government in the US has been active in managing our safety and to construct frameworks to monitor infectious disease, dangerous weather, the actions of potential enemies, food safety, pollution, work safety, chemical and nuclear safety, air, land and sea transportation safety, and put in place and maintain the national highway system. Oh yes, and the US military is busy guarding our borders to protect commerce.
Over time our gov’t has identified ways to make life safer and healthier for all citizens, irrespective of race, color or creed. After WWII, the US became the global hegemon. While very far from perfect, the US has contributed to the health and wellbeing of countless people and countries. Where do so many people emigrating from their homelands want to go? To Russia or China? Until now the US was synonymous with opportunity and freedom. But the world has tired of US hegemony and new alliances are being forged.
The sly schemers at the Heritage Foundation who dreamt up Project 2025 seem to have put into play a populist movement that closely rhymes with Norquist’s idea. Make the unpopular cuts in the federal government during a conservative supermajority with a president who has risen to folk hero status. Presently, we are in a 2-year span between national elections. By the time the Democratic party has legislative or executive control, untying the MAGA/GOP web snugged into place will take a new Congress and a new president years to repair, if ever.
Trump is still in office partly because the bulk of the US population respects the national election schedule. In doing so, citizens are trapped in the stretch of history with him in office. This respect is in contrast to Trump’s disrespect for government institutions and the Constitution. His greed mentality, animated by his transactional approach to seemingly everything, keeps him pushing the boundaries of presidential norms. Instead of legislating his plans for the country, he rules by executive order and relies on the courts to validate his actions. The GOP strategy from years back of filling the courts with conservative judges is paying off by planting Trump-friendly judges in many districts. However, it doesn’t always payoff for the orange Jesus.
The viewpoint voiced by Michelle Obama saying to the effect of “if they go low, we go high” has fallen limp and become only a hopeful aphorism. The power of this statement seems inadequate to win many elections for liberal candidates. Part and parcel of the “Woke” accusation by MAGAs is the idea that liberals can’t stomach what needs to be done. It comes from the same playbook that includes advice to spank your kids and ignore the tragedy of gender misclassification. Dems, they say, are too soft headed to apply tough love.
In politics and religion, you find people who are devotees of particular doctrines that they perhaps do not understand clearly. If you are a devotional thinker, you strive to absorb doctrine. If you are an analytical thinker, you will make the effort to dissect an assertion and examine it for accuracy, clarity and implications. This is obviously a spectrum and “devotional” and “analytical” are the bookends of that spectrum. America is a mix of doctrinaire and analytical thinkers who may respond differently to a given idea or point.
The most effective way to outfox your political opponents is to make outrageous statements and repeat them endlessly à la Trump. An outrageous sentence takes only a few seconds to utter but can take many hours or days to research and prepare a rebuttal. Worse yet, the rebuttal isn’t guaranteed to get popular airtime unless delivered by a famous person like a late-night TV host, George Clooney or Gov. Newsom. We’ve become accustomed to outrageous statements paraded in the media in the form of a freak show. Everyone has watched satire and absurdism as entertainment. Superficially, Trump’s absurd statements seem to cray that no one could believe him. But people do take his ridiculous utterances seriously.
All of the legacy news organizations in the US media are owned by corporations. Corporations have both stockholders and stakeholders. Stockholders (owners) of a corporation can be the public, select individuals or the founder and/or upper management. The stakeholders are customers, employees, vendors and other organizations whose livelihood depends on the corporation. The management and stockholders of the major media outlets demand maximum quarterly profits (normal), so news directors have no motive to risk losing eyeballs to the competition for fear of losing their jobs. Newsrooms usually have a well-honed sense of what it takes to hold the flighty attention span of its audiences. Factually accurate and rational analysis, if ever delivered, are likely to remain on a hard drive unless there are some important heart strings to tug. News directors and editors are loathe to broadcast or print content that Dan Rather once called MEGO- My Eyes Glaze Over.
One of the attributes of stockholder ownership of a public stock is that the stockholders are very often like absentee landlords. They have nothing to do with the actual day-to-day operation of the corporation other than apply pressure on C-Suite management from a distance. To them, a given company is just a profitable parking spot for their cash irrespective of the merits of the company’s product to society. They have been given legal personhood but without the expectation of kindness and other human attributes. It’s hard to fathom how this might be different.
The popular news media are more accurately defined as semi-analytical show business.
While the news media have been bathing in the warm glow of its status as the 4th Estate, the inherent attribute of being a corporate entity with stockholders as absentee landlords is approaching the corporate bookend. That bookend can be found in the curriculum of any popular MBA program. Find the gap between the current state and the desired conditions and use KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, to close the gap. The more quantitative the KPIs, the more enshrined they’ll become in the C-Suite. It allows the accounting and finance MBAs to sit at their spreadsheets and plot impressive bar graphs with hockey stick projections of near-term EBITDA.
I will offer that if Trump somehow gets elected for a 3rd term, the USA as we knew it has collapsed. If a single party can manage to illegally keep a man in office for an extra term, then the government is very much out of control. At that point, what are the citizens to do? Sit and endure the new authoritarian state like so many have in history? Or do we take up arms and fight a tyrannical government? Isn’t that what the 2nd amendment to the Constitution is for? Something to think about.
The awful shooting in Michigan recently as well as other shootings in the last several days are a reminder- as if we need it- that this mass shooting business is not a bug but rather a feature of current American culture. It is yet more male violence. So far, Americans have failed to acknowledge that males as a group have a problem. The way we raise boys in general needs to be rejiggered to produce better citizens overall. Obviously, there are a great many good and decent fellas in the US- maybe most- but a minority are quite problematic.
Surely there must be a way to address this matter without heavy handed interference in people’s lives. This is in large part a civics problem. The question is this: How can we guide everyone to be better citizens, maybe males especially?
I am convinced that the current political conundrum in the USA is in large part due to poor education. The primary responsibility for a child’s education is borne by the parents. However, all too often the schools are held responsible for this. Yes, the expectation is for K-12 schools to properly educate students and prepare them to get along and prosper after graduation. Plainly this model is failing many students.
Presently, many parents seem to want to put the entire responsibility on the school system. Yes, the schools have much responsibility, but in the end the parents must be held accountable for their child’s education. Sitting passively and watching your child fail in school while complaining about it is as far as many can go. If your child is unable to add, subtract, multiply and divide by graduation, you have let your child down.
Having gotten a child through K-12 and college, I realize that remedial home schooling is tricky. In our case, the curriculum for math was alien to me (a PhD in Chemistry) and my teacher spouse (MA in Special Ed). Our kid was required to learn many different techniques for basic calculation and problem solving. Because using methods I learned was not in the curriculum, to instruct using methods I learned would contradict the teacher and the worksheets from the curriculum. To avoid this, I refrained from teaching my methods and tried to absorb the curriculum, which I failed.
A great many US citizens are forced to endure gun violence because any argument that might impede any aspect of anyone’s ability to own a gun is met with howls of indignation and angry hand waving arguments based on the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution. Okay, fine. Conservative politicians are loathe to touch this electrified 3rd rail of politics. Candidates for the US Congress will sometimes post pictures of themselves in ads holding a firearm with a flag somewhere in the picture. This is meant to assure conservative voters that they as patriots will uphold the 2nd Amendment to the US constitution. I understand this and I cannot believe that any liberal politician could ever separate gun owners from their guns. There would be shooting and violence. The government confiscating American citizen’s guns is in no way politically feasible.
Source: K-12 Shooting Database. The Mormon church shooting or other shootings in public places aren’t part of this data set.
For the most part, school killings were unusual prior to the Columbine shootings in 1999. What has changed? One notable change relates to the emergence of smart phones and the internet. According to Wikipedia-
Above is a graphic from the K-12 Shooting Database. In the USA K-12 refers to the 13 years of basic education all children receive in public and private schools.
If you wade into the language, you’ll find that the definition of ‘mass shooting’ might vary a bit. Sometimes the definition refers to 3 or more deaths, but for the most part there is no agreed upon definition.
As a kid I recall exploring with a .22 caliber rifle out in the grassy river bottom. Maybe it’s just me, but I was always itching for an excuse to fire the gun at something like a badger or a fish. Never shot a badger or a fish, thankfully. I’m only saying that possessing a gun and ammo gave me a sense of power and authority. My imagination tells me that there are others.
These shootings are the status quo and usually fail to generate more than a day or two of concern but ring hollow. Except for Charlie Kirk. Thoughts and prayers are offered by many, but to no useful end. Flowers and stuffed animals are left at the crime scene, but most people return to their streaming episodes of TV with gunplay being central to the show.
Americans have a fascination with murder as a plot device for their entertainment. Or is it that the writers and producers in showbiz have a fascination with murder? Better yet, is it that murder as a plot point is easier to mold into a drama? The chore of producing one new and original script per week must be exhausting. Hollywood feigns some concern over the violence but continues to bang out more grotesque violence in their creations.
The prevalence of violent video games exposes young men, women and kids to wanton destruction of human beings. Some deny that these games promote violence, but the enthusiastic death-dealing and mayhem produced by the players is telling. People are immensely entertained by it. I’ve seen where the military even encourages its active-duty soldiers to play games with violent gunplay. That is the job of soldiers. Causing casualties is what they train to do because it is necessary. I get it.
Military training of combat soldiers focuses on efficient destruction, killing and survival. Could there be any room for civics exposure sometime in the soldier’s hitch? Would it be so bad if converting 1 or 2 hours of heavy physical training per week into learning about how to conduct themselves in the culture they are actually preparing to defend? Obviously, continuous training builds muscle memory and reflexes for maximum readiness, however it seems likely that trainees get into diminishing returns eventually.
We want citizen soldiers to exit the military and become productive members of society. But if they enter the military absent the basics of how a liberal democracy operates, how does nothing but weapons training and military tactics prepare them to re-enter civilian life? As a nation we exploit their best years of youthful energy and enthusiasm like other nations do, but afterwards we bump them out without practical job skills.
If the above definition is “woke” then I’m certainly woke.
A good question is, why were these large-scale killings scarce before 1990? For the school shootings, the hockey stick curve above shows that from about 2010, the incident count exploded to 2018 where it leveled off briefly but rapidly took off again.
Before 1990 there was an internet in its infancy, but no smart phones. Unless you had access to a computer, electronic entertainment and news reached a very few people. Unlike today, people were isolated from events and politics. There were only the 3 major networks plus PBS, newspapers and magazines. All suffered from time delays owing to content production chores. The standards and practices required discipline and ‘proper’ content absent speculation and hype. There were the tabloids like the National Enquirer that indulged in gossip, but their credibility low, at least among educated people.
Today, with the 24 hr news cycle, content is broadcast immediately and most of the entire population are free to take half-baked news items and wind themselves into a tizzy.
Finally, I must say that I’m pessimistic about controlling gun violence in the US. Unless a large fraction of the population adopts something similar to how Japan schools their children, Kids will continue to process the contradiction of problem solving with guns and whatever peaceful examples they see around them.
RFK, Jr., and his overlord, the Orange Jesus, have announced a possible link between acetaminophen and ADHD and autism. When they announced it, the trade name Tylenol was used. We can be certain that it went over like a lead balloon in the acetaminophen manufacturer’s world. But, first things first: Myth Busters were able to get a balloon made of lead sheets to actually float.
Lead balloon from Myth Busters episode. Source: Adam Sandler, YouTube.
It was announced that the FDA will be adding language to acetaminophen packaging warning. of the risk of ADHD and autism. To be sure, acetaminophen is capable of causing injury to the liver when an overdose is taken. Snakes in particular are very sensitive to acetaminophen poisoning. The island of Guam embarked on a program to rid the island of the invasive brown tree snake. A total of 2000 mice laced with acetaminophen were air-dropped over Guam in 2013 in an attempt to knock down the population on the island. The linked article did not mention the success rate. In addition to hepatotoxicity, apparently acetaminophen also converts hemoglobin to methemoglobin in just a few hours. Scientific details were behind a paywall which I generously leave to the reader to scale.
Our hospitals and medical staff prescribe acetaminophen because it does not interfere with blood clotting like the NSAIDS do. The makers of acetaminophen would like us to believe that their product is a superior pain reliever or anti-inflammatory to aspirin or ibuprofen. Decide for yourself.
How long will Kennedy continue to make faulty assertions, generally? As long as King Louie continues to keep him in the cabinet.
What is the deal with Russia? Why do the Russian people tolerate the lack of basic freedoms we in the West are accustomed to? Dissatisfaction with their government has been there since the beginning. Hundreds of millions have been deprived of liberty and prosperity following Russian revolution.
The history of early 20th century reveals the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Later, after much blood and treasure was spilled after the revolution and then through the cold war, the Soviet Union collapsed after a brief attempt at openness. Many around the world saw the collapse as a positive thing and a sign of better times ahead, especially for the people of the former USSR. There was hope in the West for a transition to some variety of Russian-tinted democracy and for freedoms heretofore absent for the average citizens of the former USSR.
To Russians in power, the very idea of a democratic republic is alien and inconceivable. There is a baseline level of distrust and fear of the infectiousness of the democratic spirit among Russian/Soviet leadership. Even the population has been convinced that the moral collapse of the West would spread to their homeland without an iron-fisted leader.
For a part of the world that has been strangling under autocratic rule and economic stratification since before the time of the Tsars, there has not been a historical Russian-style power sharing agreement between the monarchy and the nobility or the serfs from which to build upon. After generations of polarization by Soviet propaganda focused on Western hegemony and the moral turpitude of the West, there was no likelihood of building upon a Western style democratic model. The Russian propaganda engine continues to this day as strong as ever but with the help of the internet, artificial intelligence and widespread political indifference or gullibility.
The decade of the 1990’s following the collapse of the former USSR was a time of redistribution of wealth for a lucky few. Large Soviet industrial sectors were absorbed by a few private interests, producing fabulously wealthy oligarchs. This did not go unnoticed by the populace, who simmered in anger over it because they expected a freedom and prosperity dividend from the collapse. Amidst the confusion and dissatisfaction with Russian President Yeltsin, there arose a growing sense that Russia needed a strongman leader. Many even spoke admiringly of Stalin.
The collapse of the USSR left an internal power vacuum that would soon be filled by former Soviet citizens. Boris Yeltsin was elected President of Russia in December 1991 and remained as President until 1999 when his selected successor Prime Minister and former FSB director Vlad Putin took over as acting president. Putin was elected president in May of 2000.
I’ve been trying to understand why present-day Russia seems so … belligerent. My focus to start with is Putin. Rather than being a one-of-a-kind freak of nature, Putin is rather ordinary as a dictator except that his regime has a nuclear triad. Until its invasion of Ukraine, Russia also had the benefit of whatever left-over respect it may have had from its Soviet military reputation. But that has changed dramatically.
Putin has long expressed the view that the collapse of the USSR was a tragedy. He wants to rebuild the stature of Russia into a global superpower. Soviet leaders held the view that in order for Moscow to be safe from attack by the West, the Slavic eastern European countries bordering Western Russia had to be under the wing of the Kremlin. It was this deep boundary in combination with the Russian winter that helped to wear down the invasions of Napolean and Hitler. Both armies were substantially weakened by traversing the extensive farmlands and steppes of Ukraine and Poland. It is difficult to believe that this thinking has changed since the collapse.
When the USSR collapsed it left much more than empty senior positions and titles to fill. The Soviet governing apparatus was abandoned when the Kremlin finally conceded that the USSR was economically unsustainable. Even a culture built upon bribery and corruption needs an all-encompassing structural skeleton to manifest its national identity and sustain an economy, security and a global presence. Even a corrupt government needs some sustainability.
Unfortunately for present day Russia, extensive government bribery and corruption in all sectors was already baked in from Soviet times. On a practical level, getting things done involved bribery. Bribes were expected and paid as a matter of routine in the military and all other areas of government. Today there have been show trials with certain high-level officials being tried, convicted and imprisoned on bribery charges. It gives the population bread and circuses to consume and hopefully optimism for a brighter future.
The USSR and later the Russian Federation did not have the benefit of English common law which evolved from the Magna Carta. Born of earlier conquest by the Rus, the Bolsheviks had nothing to build upon for a more democratic legal system like the American colonists had. Overall, Bolsheviks forcibly switched from monarchy to an autocratic socialist empire. Conquest of the tsarist Russian empire by the Bolsheviks was difficult because there were numerous groups vying for power, leading to the Russian civil war following the 1917 revolution.
Although Putin and the cranky Dimitry Medvedev have done a bit of nuclear saber rattling, the West has been concerned about Russian nukes since their very first test in the late 1940’s, so not much new here. Putin’s stern public warnings about nuclear retaliation were not necessary for the Western experts to be on alert. This apparent “virtue signaling” in the form of a public warning by Putin is just a part of Russia’s overall hybrid warfare approach. They’ll use every word and inflection uttered by Russian and Western media as well as the Kremlin to fortify their propaganda with doubt, suspicion and existential threats. They are also actively injecting propaganda into every media stream in the West they can manage. Putin’s dire public warnings about lowering the threshold for a tactical nuclear release were meant to cause a great clenching of public sphincters with the usual fear and loathing leading to internal political pressure for its enemies.
/*begin anecdote/*
Russia’s triad of Soviet-era nuclear weapons have been aging in storage. Are Russian nuclear bomb designs immune to shelf-life issues? By comparison, American-style nuclear weapons have a relatively short shelf-life because of their boosted triggers. According to one source, the entire US nuclear arsenal of nuclear triggers are boosted. American nuclear trigger designs have a short shelf-life stemming from tritium’s 4500 +/- 8 day half-life or 12.32 years (NIST, 2000). US fission triggers have a hollow core which contains a 1 to 1 deuterium-tritium mixture. This booster gas undergoes fusion during ignition in the center of the core and increases the fission yield by the release of abundant 14 MeV neutrons into the surrounding fissile material. With the use of a booster to breed neutrons, the critical mass of fissile explosive is reduced because more neutrons are dispersed to initiate a runaway fission while under intense compression. The reduced mass of fissile material in a bomb is also resistant to unintended ignition by a nearby source of neutrons, like a nearby nuclear explosion.
Tritium is 3H, with 1 proton and 2 neutrons. It undergoes a beta decay where a neutron decays to a proton and an ejected electron, forming 3Helium with 2 protons and a neutron. So, wouldn’t you know, 3Helium is a poison with a very high neutron capture cross section. An aging booster gas loses its tritium potency as well as gaining an effective neutron poison.
But for this application to work, an ongoing supply of tritium is required. Tritium must be produced in a breeder reactor or accelerator. In addition to its short half-life, tritium decay is problematic to monitor because of its low 5.7 keV average beta radiation energy. Tritium atoms or molecules can be detected and measured by mass spectroscopy, but its beta decay radiation requires special equipment to detect. Tritium emits very low energy, low penetrating beta particles which are limited to 6 mm of travel in air and are blocked by the dead layer of skin cells on the surface of the skin. Getting through the window of a Geiger-Muller tube is a problem. So, measurement of tritium activity requires a liquid scintillation detector or an ionization chamber. A sample of radioactive material is dissolved in a vial of scintillation cocktail and run through a scintillation detector which detects faint flashes of light corresponding particle emissions. Perhaps detectors using scintillation crystals like cesium iodide are available for tritium detection.
/*end anecdote/*
A History of Conflict
The lands of Eurasia have, over time, been overprinted with layers upon of layers of conflict over thousands of years. While it may seem reasonable to assume that the current national borders of Europe have finally overcome the urge for military conquest, this seems over-optimistic. The ease with which Putin dashed in to grab large tracts of Ukraine in 2014 show that land-grab invasions are not just left to the past.
The more you learn about the last 4000 years of history of the lands covering the British Isles to Portugal to Mongolia to north Africa and the Levant, the more apparent it is that battles of conquest and defense have overwhelmingly been the norm.
There have been so many armies who have fought bloody battles and died or prevailed on the Eurasian landscape since before Roman times, it is a wonder that there aren’t still great heaps of bones wrapped in rotted battle gear. As always, much remains below the surface in history.
Putin’s Botched War
The Putin-Ukraine war is a war of conquest begun by a dictator who somehow didn’t understand or foresee the accurate weapons made available to Ukraine by the USA and Europe. He misunderstood the willingness of the West to come to Ukraine’s aid, but also and maybe more importantly, the magnitude of the relative sophistication of Western armaments and war materiel. This was a major blunder. While Russian military intelligence should have kept the Kremlin updated on Western weaponry, Putin should have asked more penetating questions. But perhaps most importantly, he underestimated the combative spirit of the Ukrainians and their president.
How did Russia manage to fall so far behind the West in the art of war? A high reliance was placed on its giant fleet of tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery. Much of this equipment was left over from WWII and the cold war. In contrast to its ground operations, Russia’s use of airpower in the early days of the war was weak and ineffective. Western military strategy has a high reliance on air power.
Russia was completely unprepared for the evolving drone tactics used against them. Drones were able to provide intelligence and pinpoint delivery of relatively small bombs at critical locations on launchers, vehicles, individual soldiers and in trenches. While Russian tanks were covered with reactive armor, the Ukrainian drones could place bombs in weak spots on the vehicles or even drop them through crew hatches to the interior where propellant and warheads could be ignited.
Post-War
To the discredit of both Russia and Ukraine, extensive use of land mines as well as cluster munitions has been made. The immorality of these munitions lies in what happens to the left-over mines and cluster bomblets remaining after the conflict. After the war, the lands are going to be recovered and farmed or rebuilt. Land mines and cluster munitions are well known to remain extremely dangerous for decades. Other conflict zones that have been so mined have left a legacy of death and mutilation for civilians.
At some point, the victor of the Putin-Ukraine war will want to salvage the scrap metal of the many thousands of vehicle carcasses left on the battlefields. One question relates to the explosive reactive armor (ERA) on the exterior of the destroyed tanks. ERA consists of a sandwich of a metal “flyer plate” facing the incoming projectile, a layer of high brisance explosive, and another metal flyer plate facing the tank armor. In order to respond to a high velocity kinetic or shaped charged projectile, a high shock-velocity, highly energetic explosive is needed for fast response to impact by a projectile. The ERA must be insensitive to small arms fire.
A great many videos of the destruction of tanks show that a tank can be destroyed and its crew killed by artillery or drones, but a large fraction of the reactive armor remains. The reactive armor contains enough high explosive to diffuse some of the incoming projectile’s energy release, yet seems to be rather insensitive to the shock of a hit a few feet away. This unexploded reactive armor will need collection and disposal.
Ukrainian farmers will need to level out the thousands of bomb craters in their fields so their equipment can traverse the ground. Obviously, Sappers or bomb disposal crews will need to de-mine the roads and pathways. Extensive trench systems will need to be filled in to recover the croplands. The environmental insult to the bombed-out battlefields is already substantial. The environmental toxicity of explosive residues may need evaluation.
Finally, in victory the brave people of Ukraine face the daunting prospect of rebuilding their homeland. Generations of children have been exposed to serious trauma and violence that no one should have to face. Their childhoods have been stolen from them and their educational prospects badly damaged.
If Russia prevails, the citizens of Ukraine face loss of their national identity and progressive Russification. All of the post-war issues given above will still be present, but the economic and social upheaval resulting from a vengeful Russian takeover will be traumatic. Many Ukrainian fighters and political leaders will no doubt be jailed, sent to gulags or perhaps defenestration.
A Russian victory in Ukraine signals bad times ahead for the rest of eastern Europe and the Baltic states. These countries, Poland in particular, already understand this and are preparing for this eventuality. Putin has previously expressed a kinship with the Slavic peoples of Eurasia and this may be part of his motivation for establishing a Russian empire.
The Fall of the American Empire
As bad luck would have it, this aggressive act of Putin’s Russia coincided with a political catastrophe in the United States. The Republican Party (GOP) in America has adopted the old Tea Party platform including libertarians and ultraconservative evangelical Christians to morph into a party of fanatical fascists, sometimes called Christo-Fascists. This is a reprehensible development that has taken decades to pull off. These Make America Great Again (MAGA) people have decided that American democracy doesn’t work. They favor a weak, authoritarian flavored democracy, similar to what Orban in Hungary has led.
The combination of the election of Donald Trump along with allowance of dark money OK’d by the US Supreme Court, the fanatical support of MAGA voters and a detailed coup strategy penned by the Heritage Foundation and funded by numerous billionaires has turned America around the corner towards an ultra-nationalist dictatorship. Trump ignores the courts, the legal role of the congress, and has lately taken a fancy to sending troops into US cities.
Some knowledgeable scholars have offered that American hegemony, in place since the end of WWII, is all but over. Some estimate that the American empire reached its peak influence perhaps 15 years ago and has been in decline since then but Americans haven’t paid attention. Trump, with his claims on Panama, Canada and Greenland as well as his manic desire to impose tariffs on globally has sent American credibility into the waste bin. The global economic upset caused by Trump has forced former friends to forge new alliances, leaving America behind.
Even if the stars lined up right and Trump and Vance disappeared tomorrow, a return to the previous status quo is unlikely to happen. The rapid trade disengagement by Canada suggests that they have had serious doubts with the USA already and this Trump fiasco was the last straw. There has been grumbling by other nations in the past that the American 4-year presidential cycle leads to excessive and frequent foreign policy changes that cause difficulties for them.
Trump’s “America First” declaration and radical disengagement with previous foreign policy has left an apparent power vacuum in the world. This has not gone unnoticed by anyone. Of course, the BRICS nations (Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russian Federation, South Africa, and United Arab Emirates) are taking advantage of this sea change and are considering moving from the US dollar as the principal reserve currency. America is willingly abandoning its historical global stabilizing ability in exchange for a more libertarian internal structure.
What can a chemist possibly have to say that could be even marginally interesting about extraterrestrial life or evolution? Well, as far as extraterrestrial life and the search for it goes, I would say that all of the metallurgy, semiconductor fabrication, liquid hydrocarbon fuels, chemicals, transportation technology or polymers exploited in radio or optical astronomy, have some element of chemistry in their manufacture.
………………..
The quest to discover life beyond Earth captivates many in the broad field of space science. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has played a significant role in astronomy and space science communities. However, the search extends beyond intelligent life; any form of life or even the essential components and conditions conducive to life, are of keen interest.
It is widely accepted that the physics governing our planet and solar system likely applies universally. While this is a hypothesis, it is a reasonable one. If the physics are consistent, then the chemistry should be as well. Consequently, the behavior and limitations associated with matter would be uniform across the cosmos. This reasoning suggests that life elsewhere in the universe would be governed by the same chemical and quantum mechanical principles familiar to us.
The “Anthropic Principle” has caused much debate, with Wikipedia noting that “Anthropic reasoning is often employed to address the notion that the universe appears to be precisely calibrated for life.” The mystery of why numerous physical constants and their ratios needed to be exactly as they are for life to emerge on Earth has intrigued many.
To say the Big Bang’s initial pressure and temperature were high is an understatement. As the universe expanded and cooled, energy barriers emerged that shaped the interactions of matter and of photons, placing boundaries on the spontaneous transformation behavior of matter. Pathways of interaction emerged, steering transformations towards increasingly specific outcomes. Essentially, it’s basic kinetics: the quickest transformations and their stable products start to prevail and fill the universe.
If physical constants are emergent at the moment of the Big Bang and become manifest down the timeline, could it be that another Big Bang could happen that is not conducive to life? There would be nobody there to ponder these questions. Life is here because it was possible and maybe even likely here and there.
The phrase “finely tuned for the existence of life” seems to leave open a crack for a creationist view. Absent the many spooky bronze and iron-age theories still in practice today, naturally a sentient being can look at her/his/its existence and marvel at how beautifully synchronized and proportioned the machinery of the universe is. Certainly, there must be a hidden message in this, right?
ET? What th’ …?
Animals like mammals, birds, fish, and even some invertebrates like octopi and crabs are considered to be sentient. According to Google, sentient animals are those that can experience feelings and sensations, both positive and negative, like pleasure, pain, joy, and fear. So, while an octopus may have elements of sentience, could distant observers elsewhere in the galaxy detect them from optical or radio astronomy techniques? Try as it might, the ability of an octopus to construct a powerful radio transmitter and beam a message into the cosmos is sorely limited by its physical anatomy. Except for humans, no other sentient life form on Earth is known to construct a radio transmitter that would serve as a beacon of sentient life.
Until recent history, SETI was limited by the lack of technology to light up the universe with our own signals or to detect faint manufactured signals across interstellar space. At such point that metallurgy, electrical engineering and the hundreds of other critical and apex technologies bloomed into a sufficient state of development, no intelligent emanations from Earth found their way into space.
While TV and radio broadcasts began their journey into space, it is important to realize that our signals were encoded onto carrier waves. Amplitude modulation (AM) signals carry their information by simply varying the magnitude of a single frequency in time with the human voice or music. This is most likely to be grasped by alien radio astronomers. Frequency modulation (FM) is a bit more challenging because audio signal is mixed with a carrier signal by a heterodyne circuit. Extracting useful information would require them to pull audio frequency information from the heterodyned signal.
Television is much more difficult. While the alien radio astronomers may have figured out FM encoded radio information, the particular details of the TV raster scan are based how human engineers decided to interlace and sequence scans to produce an image on a screen of a particular aspect ratio. TV designers took advantage of the human’s persistence of vision to seamlessly follow moving pictures to give continuous images yet maintaining a fast enough frame rate to avoid flickering. The television’s electronic timing is based on frame rate, the number of interlaced lines, and the aspect ratio of the screen.
The point of this TV discussion is that a TV signal must be deconvoluted into a signal that properly displays an image and plays the sound on a particular piece of equipment. This could be challenging for an alien radio astronomy research group to decode.
All of this talk about an octopus developing radio astronomy presupposes that its unique octopussian sentience includes such desires.
It could be that the initial energy at t = 0 yielding the primordial plasma constituting the early Big Bang was only capable of producing a specific set of fields producing elementary particles which then give way to a specific set of quantitative relationships and properties. The burst of energy causing the Big Bang must have had constraints driving its transformation into matter, which is also constrained by quantum mechanics, etc. Maybe the present universe is simply what primordial energy naturally does when expanding as a universe. Why do the quantitative values of physical constants need to be variable? An imaginary and feverish conundrum.
As the highly energized primordial plasma of the Big Bang began to cool, matter and energy channeled into particular states. The particle energy states that had the highest barriers coalesced first followed by subsequent lower energy plasma condensing into other particles. I’m drawing a crude analogy to the process where individual minerals form from cooling magma according to their melting points.
There is a notion prevalent among Creationists that the probability of a life form spontaneously forming from individual atoms is 1 in 10large or some other inconceivably miniscule chance. And if that was how life had to form, then the Earth would still be a sterile wet rock. But that is not how chemical transformations work.
Central to the Creationist view is that evolution cannot happen because there is nothing but random chance to guide the molecules of life into a highly complex organism. They start with the assumption that life arose purely from random chance. I hope to show that this assumption is false.
All atoms and molecules have properties that either qualify or disqualify them as a candidate for a given atomic or molecular transformation. All molecules have properties that either qualify or disqualify them to take part in a transformation resulting in a given product. The words “qualify” or “disqualify” could mean that something will or will not happen absolutely. But just as likely, the words could mean that a transformation is just too slow at a given temperature to give the desired effect. As it happens, temperature is critically important to molecular transformations. At a low enough temperature, most transformations will slow to a negligeable rate, shutting down that particular transformation channel. In general, where there are competing transformation channels, the fastest channel will prevail in producing its product.
All molecules have a limited set of reaction channels at a given temperature as a result of their particular reactivity.
What we think of as ‘ordinary’ chemistry is more precisely the electronic behavior of valence electrons. Nuclear chemistry also exists but in the domain of nuclear change.
Valence electrons on earth will behave the same everywhere in comparable conditions. Chemistry happens at the outer, valence level of ions, atoms and molecules. So, we should expect that bond forming and bond breaking mechanisms should be the same throughout. All of this leads to the high likelihood that chemical reaction mechanisms elsewhere in the universe should not be unfamiliar to Earthlings in general.
Life on earth exists as a result of the behavior of particular chemical substances within a range of chemical and thermal environments. The range of chemical environments and substances present during the initiation of life is thought to be quite different than what we find on earth at the present time. For instance, gas phase molecular oxygen was not present until a considerable time after life began. The initiation of life on earth was under anaerobic conditions and was able to start and survive with the materials at hand. Biochemistry is a series of reduction/oxidation events driven by the Gibbs energy of a transformation as is all of chemistry. Even on anoxic earth, diverse oxidizers were present.
Today, anaerobes are known to use the oxidative properties of inorganic species like sulfate (SO42-), nitrate (NO3-), ferric iron (Fe3+), carbon dioxide (CO2) and manganese (Mn 4+). Other anaerobic oxidants include chromate (CrO42-) and arsenate (AsO43-) which may have been present as well. Reductants include nitrite (NO2-), ferrous iron (Fe2+), and sulfide (S2-).
Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe and the second most abundant heavy element on earth behind iron. Many elements are strongly attracted to the abundant oxygen so it is no wonder that so many minerals are oxides of one sort or another. Oxyanions like silicates, carbonates, sulfate, nitrate, and oxides like CO2 or any number of metal oxides all contain oxygen that has been bound with another element. The oxygen pulls negative charge away from the central element making it electron deficient. In the case of sulfate and others, the actual oxidizing part is the atom with the oxygens attached, in this case the sulfur.
The presence of life on Earth means that there is a “habitable zone in parameter space“. All of the parameters affecting biochemistry must align in such a way that a zone of allowable chemical and physical conditions will exist. Many things must exist simultaneously such as the many properties and abundances of chemical substances, a suitable atmospheric composition and pressure, a planetary temperature range allowing for the presence of liquid water and the presence of sufficiently reactive organic molecules.
Not every transformation of matter is within reach in a given condition. Chemical reactivity which comprises kinetics and thermodynamics has the effect of channeling matter into a finite number of probable pathways. This bestows the property of selectivity. For any given chemical substance, only a certain limited group of transformations are possible or likely, given the conditions.
Life as we know it exists because our biomolecules were robust enough to survive their chemical and thermal environments, but not so robust that they resist the needed transformations. Life depends on biomolecules being moderately stable but not by too much. Biomolecules can organize into particular structures that are physically robust, like the chitin shells on shellfish. In the chemistry of life, chemical transformations must be tolerant of the aqueous environment in and around an organism, but not so tolerant that the necessary reactions are too slow or too fast within the narrow range of environmental temperatures available.
Organisms on earth are tolerant of water at the level of molecules. The internal apparatus of the cell is an aqueous environment having some amount of viscosity. In order for molecules to interact, they must collide with each other. Life in the solid phase would mean that biomolecules would be immobilized and unable to collide and react. Cell structure for metabolism and reproduction would not be feasible. Life in the gas phase is limited by the vapor pressure of the necessary substances. Many, if not most, biomolecules would not tolerate the heat necessary to volatilize. They would decompose.
A diversion into molecular evolution.
I’ll just blurt it out- ongoing evolution requires heritable change in a genome. A genetic change must be survivable for the parent cell to reproduce and produce viable daughter cells. The inherited mutation must not be deleterious to further reproductions of the subsequent generations. A mutation may randomly result in something that has either a lethal effect, no effect, or produces some biomolecular improvement. The mutation may be as modest as an enzyme alteration causing it to bind either more or less tightly to a ligand resulting in a few percent change in rate of some the enzyme’s function. This could translate into better efficiency in producing some cell structure or better use of energy. It could also be that nothing changes as a result of the efficiency alteration, or that it has an overall negative effect further challenging the survival of the cell line in a nonlethal way.
There are two kinds of changes that can occur with DNA. One is a change in the sequence of the DNA molecule itself. The other kind is “epigenetic” which is heritance not reliant on changes on the DNA sequence.
Creationists like to make a show of the probability of random chance producing even simple ordered sequences as fantastically small. Actually, their superficial analysis of permutations and probability looks plausible. I can’t argue with the low probability of individual atoms coming together randomly to form a living organism all at once. However, the beginning assumptions are wrong. Life did not spontaneously form out of a bunch of loose atoms by simply condensing into a centipede or a human. Change in evolution happens at the molecular level a step at a time. A change in the amino acid sequence of any given enzyme must trace back to a change in the DNA sequence to pass along a heritable mutation. Evolution moves by fits and starts. A mutation may have no effect, advantageous effect or deadly effect.
At the level of molecules, change happens through very definite chemical mechanisms. Molecules are constrained to do certain things and in a particular way. It’s like a channel. Sometimes two or more channels may be possible. In this case, the fastest channel will dominate in output and influence. An evolutionary change might cause a biochemical transformation to stop, speed up, slow down, or be more or less specific in outcome.
Molecular bonds vibrate in the range of 1013 to 1014 Hertz. A hydrogen molecule will reportedly undergo 2.5 x 1010 collisions per second at 2 bar and 24 oC. If two atoms or molecules are to react, then they must collide. At a given temperature, a collection of hydrogen atoms will be dispersed over a statistical distribution of energies.
Biochemistry on earth has evolved around water and takes advantage of certain properties of water. Its ability to hydrogen-bond is exploited extensively in biomolecule structures. Water has the ability to accommodate charged species or neutral dipolar species. This is called hydrophilicity. It is important not just to keep ions and molecules in solution, but also to stabilize the transition of a reaction if it generates a momentary dipole.
Water is immiscible with substances having a large hydrocarbon protuberances like fatty acids, phospholipids or certain side groups found on a few amino acids. This is called hydrophobicity. Terrestrial biochemistry exploits both hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity.
A benefit of hydrophobicity in biochemistry is that fatty substances like phospholipids will spontaneously organize into the lipid bilayer structure. Hydrophobicity in this case leads to the formation of stable compartmental structures. Life takes full advantage of the lipid bilayer in the production of the cell wall. This keeps all of the necessary biomolecules contained and concentrated for effective and timely biochemical transformations to occur. The cell wall excludes a great many deleterious substances as well. However, many protein structures have sections that are sufficiently hydrophobic as to be compatible with the hydrophobic lipid part of the bilayer. This property allows the protein to anchor itself within the bilayer leaving the more hydrophilic portions of the protein jutting out into the extra- and intracellular aqueous media. Many of these proteins penetrating the bilayer- channel proteins- are sufficiently hollow as to allow ions or molecules to pass through. Even better, the ability to pass ions or molecules through can be switched on or off by other biomolecules or with drugs.
Some larger molecules like the fatty phospholipids above have both hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions. Given the chance, phospholipid molecules will spontaneously orient themselves in a way that when combined the water ‘repellant’ hydrophobic tails will tend do aggregate. This leaves the hydrophilic phosphate features at each end to remain in contact with the water environment.
Cells have compartmentalization and cell walls simply because of the incompatibility of the polar water molecule and nonpolar hydrocarbons. These two incompatible liquids arrange in a way that minimizes the surface area of contact between them. They will form layers when stationary or droplets when one is dispersed in the other. This is the minimum energy condition they spontaneously go to. Micelles will even form spontaneously in your soapy dishwater.
Life on earth presently requires many environmental conditions to be just right. Cells of micellar-like construction take advantage of the hydrophobicity of substances with long chain hydrocarbon parts on one end and charged or polar features on the other side. Micelles are structures that spontaneously form in water. Living cells adopt a bilayer structure based upon the tendency for “likes to dissolve likes.” That is, non-polar hydrocarbon features “prefer” not to be in contact with polarized water, but rather cluster in a way that minimizes water-hydrocarbon surface contact. The effect of carbon chain structures in the biochemistry of earth is the stability of carbon-based structures and the wide variety features it can accommodate. These features include stable carbon-carbon chains as well as carbon bonds to hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O) and sulfur (S) in particular. Carbon is unique in that it readily allows the formation of stable double bonds with itself or N, O, or S. Carbon also can form triple bonds with itself or N. Cyanide and acetylene are examples. The ease and stability of carbon bonded to C, N, O and S, along with the stability of multiple bonds on carbon all point to it as an excellent candidate for as the ideal building block for biomolecules.
It is often mentioned that since silicon has certain similarities to carbon why isn’t life based on it? Silicon-silicon bonds are prone to oxidation and not found in nature. Silicon is almost always found in nature as silicate in its various forms in minerals and very often in variety of silicate oligomers and polymers. Silicon-nitrogen and silicon-sulfur substances are not easy energetically. Furthermore, silicon does not form double bonds with itself or other elements. So, the variety of structural motifs silicon can form isn’t as broad as carbon. Silicon vastly prefers to be silicate in nature. Silicon is not found in biomolecules despite its high abundance in the nature.
Conclusion
I’m trying to make the point that extraterrestrial life will surely be different from life on earth at the macroscopic scale but maybe not so much at the level of molecular transformations. Every living species today trails behind it a unique evolutionary history, some of which remains in their genomes. Despite the huge variety of life forms on earth and all of the attendant structural variability that goes with it, we all share the use of DNA/RNA, proteins, carbohydrates, phosphates, lipids, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, etc. All life forms on earth are able to capture and use energy as well as reproduce.
The history of life reveals an obstacle course through which organisms struggled to stay alive. Those that did survive had no way to anticipate the future and no way to prepare for it even if they were able to “anticipate” at all. The history of life is the history of challenges to survival.
Humans exist today because our ancestors going back into deep time were able to survive both anaerobic and oxygenated earth, snowball earth, competitive pressures from other life forms, vulcanism, cometary impact, solar UV radiation, chemical toxicity from the environment, disease and climate.
Today we can add stupidity to the list of survival challenges. Can we survive the results of our behavior? Humans have a brilliant streak in developing weapons- explosives, guns, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. If all else fails, there will always be the sharp stick and club.
Humans are the way we are because of the way that natural history unfolded. A planet with the same makeup and conditions 3 billion years ago would evolve life in a different way than we went. Evolution happens because of the ability of our genetic material to be just a bit unstable and to be passed on in reproduction. But this change is a random process in both features and time. A genetic change can be fatal or helpful. The manner and schedule in which random genetic alterations happen is impossible to predict. Evolution is blind going forward. Another try at evolution is highly unlikely to produce Homo sapiens again.
Any given “intelligent” species may or may not invent or use radio technology. Therefore, they may or may not emit or receive radio transmissions. Such creatures would be undetectable using radio astronomy. Although two patents for wireless telegraphy came out in 1872, humans have only had useable wireless telegraphy since 1895 (Marconi). As of this writing, only 128 years have elapsed since Marconi sent his first long distance (1.5 mile) radio communication.
We have only had radio communications for 128 years in the entire history of our species. In order to have this invention in 1895, the European enlightenment had to happen leading to the idea of scientific inquiry and a minimum understanding of physics and chemistry. The voltaic pile had to be invented which gave way to further refinement of electricity. At minimum, the metallurgy of iron, copper and zinc (for brass) had to be in place for the for the discovery and use of electricity. The path to broadcasting and receiving radio waves required a fair degree of curiosity and industrialization.
Lamentations on Chemistry 