If most of us had a dog that behaved in the unwholesome manner that radio entertainer Rush Limbaugh does, we would have it euthanized at the humane society. Limbaugh of course is the GOP’s grotesque and doctrinaire cartoon character and resident mad dog.  Limbaugh has been promoting the idea that conservative voters slyly vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries so as to aid her delivery to the electorate for the general election as the Democratic candidate. As the thinking goes, this will polarize voters and drive panicked undecided or inactive voters to the polls like nails to a magnet to vote for whomever the opposing party offers.

Voting is one of the most important acts we commit as citizens. To soil it with cunning and subterfuge in this manner is to disfigure ones standing as a citizen. It is simply wrong and Limbaugh should be widely condemned for his part in it.  I’m thinking tar and feathers. Or, tar and packing peanuts.

I often find myself performing synthetic preps written by others. Some literature preps are useful and efficient. More than a few are not. Many preps thoughtfully convey important issues for the operator to make note of. But very often, writers of synthetic preparations assume that users in the future will be as knowledgeable of the handling issues as they are when the paper goes to press.

The writing style used in American chemical journals is usually a past tense, passive voice style where an exuberant first person voice is frowned upon. Writers of papers in the peer reviewed literature write in a tight, condensed form that favors efficient use of space.

In industry, lab preparations are very often extracted from the literature and applied to the preparation of research or commercial products. The common style used in published procedures is such that some level of skill is assumed by the writer for the reader.  This is fair. If one is combing the literature for preps, it is usually the case that the browser has a significant level of lab skills.

But in industry, or at least in the brackish waters I splash around in, a tight literature-style preparation may not be sufficient. In order to satisfy the needs of the company as a whole, health and safety data may have to be front and center on the writeup. Proper personal protective equipment requirements must be posted, and HMIS, MSDS, and labeling data is included.  

To satisfy the cost accountants, a time and materials list might have to be tabulated in a way that makes sense to accountants. The regulatory folks need to know about air permits and TSCA status. To satisfy the Quality Assurance/Quality Control folks, lot traceability for raw materials, intermediates, and products must be defined and immortalized with a firm paper trail. This is done in the form of part numbers, certification data, inventory locations, lot numbers, and order numbers. 

A prep document itself can be a permanent record of what was done. It can be used to document the management of change. A prep document itself can be used to provide documentation in place of a lab notebook.

But most importantly, a prep document will be used by other chemists. Possibly those of a lower skill level. So it is crucial that key information is immortalized. Ambiguity must be wrung out like rinse water from a towel. Key art must be set forth, but non-critical actions must be written in such a way as to allow discretion by the operator. Overly rigid instructions restraining trivial aspects are merely burdensome and unduly constrain the operator.

Writing a procedure is a kind of brain dump. It is a disclosure of all of the art necessary and sufficient to perform an operation. For a company, a procedure is company treasure and should be jealously maintained as such.

The business of bringing a new product to market is a lot like putting in a new town along the frontier rail line. You have to build the tracks to get there. You have to haul all of your materials and skeptical people to this promised land. Once there you have to decide what goes where and who will do what. Always you must have buy-in from the settlers. Much time, energy, and acrimony goes into the progress toward the finished good. At any given moment funding can be pulled, sending everyone home and leaving you with a ghost town. A mere memory of what was and what could have been.

A well written lab prep contributes to this settlement in the new land of opportunity by providing structure and a foundation from which to build.

There was an interesting interview of SCOTUS Associate Justice Antonin Scalia on MSNBC by Tim Russert. The normally reclusive Scalia is on a media circus tour touting his new book Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading a Judge.  Like Lao Tzu or Machiavelli, Scalia is revealing his innermost thoughts on how to behave.  The comments submitted on the Law Blog are interesting. Snarky, perhaps, but revealing.

Scalia said an interesting thing in the interview. He opined that too many of America’s best and brightest are drawn to the legal profession. He conceded that the field of law is fundamentally unproductive and that to have so many bright people drawn to it was a waste of talent that could be applied more industriously.

Regarding the Bush v. Gore matter, we’re advised to “get over it”.

Why did the Democratic Party stretch the primary season over such a long period? What is the strategic value in this? Why does election season have to last so long? Don’t people ever tire of the relentless microanalysis? What will anyone really learn from the n+1th debate between Clinton and Obama?

The Romans had this figured out centuries ago- Panem et circenses (bread and circuses).  

I find myself conflicted about certain aspects of the recent raid on the Fundamentalist Mormon  compound in Texas.  The news reports say that 416 children have been taken into police custody.  Parents and lawyers have been matched up to deal with the gigantic mess that this has caused.

I am not an advocate of polygamy and I am certainly no supporter of Mormonism.  It seems to me that in all of the bizarre theology of Mormonism, the idea of Mormon polygamy isn’t a very large leap of strangeness from its core concepts.  But I digress.

What is outrageous about this event is that 416 children were taken from their home and parents and are being kept by the state of Texas, all on an anonymous phone call.  The accuracy and veracity of the caller may be spot on. But there is such a thing as due process.  The spectacle of a massive police raid resulting in the detention of children, even on clannish wingnuts like this group, should give a chill to all citizens.  The state is exceeding its bounds unreasonably. Strike that. I think that the State officials just do not know what they are doing.

Never attribute to malice what you can first explain by incompetence.

There may very well be a complete absence of resources or protocol for this circumstance. So, the Texas state legislature needs to meet to contrive some sort of consensus and policy in regard to response to the welfare of children in communal living. Some advanced thinking is needed here.  Remember Waco? 

The state turns its head the other way in regard to the plural marriage of old men to minor girls. It needs to look straight at this circumstance and deal with it. This is a conflict between the two magisteria that oversee marriage- religion and the state.  The Texas legislature needs to set clear policy that relieves law inforcement from having to interpret how existing law is to be enforced.

As usual, Th’ Gaussling’s most interesting observations of the ACS meeting are of a proprietary nature and will have to go with me to the grave. Our student and professorly friends can expound openly on what lights their fires. The lusty satisfaction of compelling oratory in the darkened halls of convention centers is part of the reward for the cardinals of the academy.  Members of the merchant class have to be satisfied with better dining.

People who are involved in personnel issues often speak of an employees “deliverables” as their work product. For those lucky enough to be in the academy, the work product includes teaching young minds, conducting research, and participating in the dissemination of the results in the form of papers and conferences.

For we chemists who did the deal with the devil in exchange for filthy lucre, our performance is rated somewhat differently.  Our performance metric only includes some understanding of science. Once it is possible to begin understanding a thing, the task of transforming a process or material property into an item of value begins. An industrial scientist’s deliverables includes many tasks that guide the company toward its goal of profitability and reward for the shareholders.

The part of the brain that sees a stick on the forest floor that resembles a tool is the same part of the brain that scans a molecule and sees latent functionality. The extraction of value from a composition or a process is a complex anthropological activity. Product development is anthropological because it involves the use of tools and organizational structure to provide products or services that are exchanged between groups.  

An industrial science group has to isolate value in some material property and contrive to bring some product or service into being.  But to get it to market, the science tribe has to cooperate with those with other skills. Organizations often resemble a confederation of tribes who cooperate with complex rituals and methods of exchange.