Notes from the A.I. Meyers Symposium

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I was able to attend only the afternoon sessions of the AI Meyers Symposium, sponsored by the Chemistry Department at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. Peter Beak from the University of Illinois spoke about organolithium chemistry related to CIPE- Complex Induced Prioximity Effect. Along the way, Beak made a few comments about the state of the science of chemistry in America in terms of the lack of a unified voice. He pointed out that the astronomers seem to be quite successful in geting major projects funded because they band together and make a unified case for funding. Beak observed that during difficult times, chemists tend to “circle the wagons and shoot inwards”.

Beak made another point about the perpetually weak state of physical organic chemistry. He suggests that the norbornyl cation controversy between H.C. Brown and Saul Winstein in the 1960’s had a deleterious effect on the field. I have heard this argument elsewhere. I can only assume that Beak means that funding for physical organic research dried up.

Victor Sniekus, Alfred Bader Professor of Chemistry at Queens University, spoke about his work with orthometallation in various projects. Daniel Comins, a Meyers post-doc, talked about alkaloid synthesis.  Much of the work from the Meyers labs was related to directed metallation or pre-coordination of R-Li with a substrate to accomplish some kind of selectivity. It was AIM’s habit to prove the merit of a transformation with an application to some kind of natural product synthesis- usually an alkaloid. I spent a year and a half struggling unsuccessfully with tylophorine and crypotpleurine.

The afternoon was rounded off with talk by Paul Reider, formerly a VP of Process Research at Merck and now teaching at Princeton University. Reider spoke in his typical entertaining manner.  What stands out above the technical details is a statement he made in regard to getting buy in for a process. He was trying to get somebody to try a reaction series-“I said it with such sincerity, they went ahead and did it! ” This is funny because you don’t get the idea that Reider or any of his colleagues are easily swayed by sincerity.

There was a fair turnout of Meyers alumni, post-docs and grad students as well as folks from other groups in the department.

Microsoft Telescope Effect

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As I plod along in my daily swim upstream, I have the occasional epiphany that makes me pull over into an eddy behind a rock and contemplate my situation. Gradually, I have been making better use of the Microsoft Office suite of products generously provided to me. Among those tools is MS Access. I have been devising database tools to help me keep various kinds of data available for quick retrieval as well as access to the source documents. For some of us, it helps for retrieval tools to be as visual as possible.

As I put the finishing touches on my latest creation, it dawned on me what a rube I was. Again I had fallen into the technology trap. Instead of making a case for administrative help, I had merely taken another step along the path of telescoping increasing job responsibilities into my work week.

It suddenly became crystal clear. Microsoft products have facilitated the near complete extinction of whole job descriptions. In times past, highly trained employees were given assistants to leverage or multiply their activity. Assistants would attend to organization of information and limit access to their boss. In this way, employees could focus on performing the expensive skills they were hired for.  To a very large extent, personal computers have rendered obsolete what used to be an ordinary working duo- a manager/specialist and an administrative assistant.

This working pair has been replaced with “personal productivity tools” that allow- require, really- that the specialist take care of all of the correspondence, filing, categorization, phone-tag, drop-in visitors, requisitions, expense reports, etc., required for the job. In most organizations I am familiar with, expensive specialists are expected to be their own office managers, file clerks, and receptionists.

Th’ Gaussling can be a bit slow on the uptake, so I’m sure others have already noted this effect long ago.

In a similar vein, James Kunstler writes about another consequence of technology. Here, he is making reference to electronic voting machines, but the notion applies well to another marketing scam: compulsory excess capacity or capability. Another way to say it is, a high tech “solution” to a low tech problem.  

  What many people are nervous about, of course, is the chance of shenanigans with the voting tally. Just one minor feature of the general paralysis gripping this society has been our inability to get rid of those mischievous Diebold computerized voting machines that leave no paper trail. By the way, these touchscreen voting units are an example of the diminishing returns of technology. There was nothing wrong with the old mechanical units, but by making over-investments in complexity we’ve just created more problems for ourselves. This ought to be a warning to those in the thrall of techno-triumphalism.

How many people make full use of most of the features of, well, any of their software? When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you are the largest software company in the Milky Way Galaxy, everything looks like a software solution opportunity.

Michael Crichton, Dead at Age 66

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I was sorry to learn of the passing of the writer Michael Crichton. My first introduction to his work was The Andromeda Strain, which I read as a student in high school. It was a good read in the 1970’s and many of us enjoyed it. The movie remains in my top 20 list. Juriassic Park was another enjoyable book.

I will say that some of his more recent books were constructed in a way that was a bit too much like television. But he was a talented writer for the scientifically tolerant mass market and I am sorry to hear that we will not be treated to more of his work.

Blue State Phase Shift

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Wow. Colorado became a blue state overnight. I wasn’t sure I’d live to see it. There is a big brooder nest of archconservatives in Colorado Springs as well as numerous Christian fundamentalist conservative organizations. The Springs has become a center of fear and loathing for frightened uberconservatives.  For a time they dominated the state government. Pity about the Springs. It is such a lovely place.

Boulder is famous within Colorado for being the states liberal, iconoclastic, and bohemian center. I’d say that characterization was true at one time. It was hit hard by the hippy movement in the 1960’s and in some ways never recovered. Today the town has become so ossified with wealthy and obstreperous gentry that the city has become one large home owners association of preening fussbudgets. The town has immobilized itself with municipal code to the point where only the very wealthy can build anything. Aspenization, some call it.

Jeepers. I remember when the Danskins movement hit Boulder. Those were the days.  Boulder fancies itself a laid-back, liberal Mecca, much like the Bay Area of CA, but in fact there is as much neurotic handwringing there as anywhere else.

So Colorado has a kind of dipolar condition wherein a political phase shift happens every generation or so. We have just witnessed a rebuke of Bush-Cheney conservatism and a switch to the blue phase.

Mass Media and the Monoform

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Some essays by Peter Watkins caught my eye recently. In particular, the essay about what Watkins refers to as the Monoform is especially well written and worth reading-

“The MONOFORM is the internal language-form (editing, narrative structure, etc.) used by TV and the commercial cinema to present their messages. It is the densely packed and rapidly edited barrage of images and sounds, the ‘seamless’ yet fragmented modular structure which we all know so well. This language-form appeared early on in the cinema, with the work of pioneers such as D.W.Griffith, and others who developed techniques of rapid editing, montage, parallel action, cutting between long shots/close shots, etc. Now it also includes dense layers of music, voice and sound effects, abrupt cutting for shock effect, emotion-arousing music saturating every scene, rhythmic dialogue patterns, and endlessly moving cameras.”

Watkins builds a case for the notion that what people see and hear in the media is the result of a type of editing philosophy that has become common over much of the world. In large part because of the precociousness of American media. What we see and hear is always a type of presentation put on by people who want to emphasize particular aspects of events in a manner that satisfies their need to supply a stimulating stream of imagery.

I think most of us have always understood that the mass audio visual media (MAVM) have always had a show business flair, but that the persuasiveness of editing was always secondary to content. Watkins suggests that editing is what primarily influences viewers in terms of the sequence and stimulus provided by well chosen cuts. It is an interesting viewpoint and one worth considering.

X-Ray Emission from Office Supplies

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The recent (re-)discovery of x-ray emission from unwinding scotch tape under vacuum makes me wonder how this phenomenon might be used. It would be interesting to see the emission spectrum. No doubt the physics boys at UCLA are pumpin’ out patents like pellets out of the back end of a rabbit.

The researchers report that duct tape does not provide the same effect as 3M Scotch tape. From the International Herald Tribune–

The tape phenomenon could also lead to simple medical devices using bursts of electrons to destroy tumors. The scientists are looking to patent their ideas.

And finally, there’s the possibility of nuclear fusion. If the energy from the breaking adhesive could be directed away from the electrons to heavy hydrogen ions implanted in modified tape, the ions would accelerate fast enough so that when they collided, they could fuse together and give off energy — the same process that lights the sun.

Good God. We’re extrapolating this finding into solutions for the energy crisis and cancer already!

The UCLA folks say that the Russians reported x-ray emission from tape in 1953, but nobody believed them. Could be a novelty-buster.  Hmmm. I wonder if my Post-It notes will emit x-rays in vacuo too?

I’ll wager that at this very moment, a group of industrious Poindexters at two or three national weapons labs are trying to weaponize triboelectric x-rays. Project BIG STICKY.

Here is a “Novelty Buster” for the public domain– What would high Z additives in the tape composition do to the x-ray output? Seems to me that the heaviest atom naturally in Scotch tape would be silicon in the release backing layer. What if they grafted some heavy metal bearing monomers (metal chelates with a vinyl or other monomer moiety) into the composition somewhere? Would that affect the output spectrum?

The Bush II Surge. What does that remind you of?

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Bush II’s celebrated military surge in Iraq roughly approximate the higher troop strength recommended by General Eric Shinseki in the first place? Doesn’t this lead in the direction of validating his assertions about troop strength? It seems to me that the merit of greater troop strength was evident several thousand years ago to a great many iron-age war lords.

I have heard little or no discussion of this point by the main stream show ponies yammering on the tube.

Gaussling’s 9th Epistle to the Bohemians. The Cardinal of Chemistry

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In the fabulous world of industry there are many, many job descriptions held by many, many people. The practical consequence of this is that there are a great number of channels in which the river of your career can flow. Opportunities come and go like eddies in the stream. We advance and sometimes retreat.  Our enthusiasms can reach flood stage or can reduce to a trickle in draught. Our intentions can be muddy or clear.

In the end, though, all rivers run into the sea. Careers can flow narrow and fast or broad and slow. But the unique social status and circle we enjoy in this stream of time is eventually lost into the brackish waters of retirement. 

For academicians and industrialists alike, a PhD buys a seat as a lower level dignitary- a prince. For the academic prince, with hard work and luck, one rises through rank and tenure to become a lord or cardinal living the courtly life of intellectual privilege under the glow of eternal admiration. A prince of academe has but to walk into a classroom to gather the attention and fear of post-pubescent underlings. Through midterms, they hang on your every word. You are golden, and every year brings a new crop of young admirers.

In industry, the fierce hydraulic pressure of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately constantly tips the crown from your head. An industrial prince or princess can be expected to labor in a more diverse variety of capacities. Negotiating raw material prices, feasting with customers, or building a corporate trebuchet. Ominously, an industrial prince may find him/herself in oversight of activities that might one day be filmed by helicopters from a safe distance up wind.

An industrial prince can find himself suddenly in full battle dress swinging an axe from a wounded horse. The Viking warlords of mergers and aquisitions will storm the palace with their corporate siege engines and announce a restructuring of the kingdom. Programs throughout the principality will be halted. Serfs will lay down their scythes in the field and let the barley rot where it stands. Lesser princes will be sacrificed to Odin and upper middle-age cardinals will be sent to the moors in the north to live in sanctuary with the Brothers of Eternal Consternation.

What remains will be a thinner core of chastened cubicle-courtiers huddling behind the organizational battlements. Survivors of the siege. One day the new archbishops and cardinals will arrive in their red silk vestments during the antiphon, bearing their strange implements and unfamiliar liturgy. Thus begins a new age.

Thermite Sparking

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Until recently I was blissfully unaware of the possibility of something called Thermite Sparking. It is a variety of the classic Thermite reaction, only it can happen inadvertently in the workplace by mechanical friction.

Thermite sparking is a circumstance wherein an aluminum part smartly strikes an oxidized iron component generating a momentary and highly localized spot of very hot metal. Normally, the thermite reaction is limited to the small mass of material in the impact zone and does not progress further.

What is useful to know is that aluminum and iron together constitute a sparking pair of materials and could serve as an ignition source for flammable liquids and vapor in the area. An aluminum cart or component could suffer an impact while in motion and provide an ignition source for a fire.