Lunar Eclipse 2008

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The eclipsed moon finally made itself visible only minutes from totality this evening. Through the gauzy haze the lopsided apparition loomed in the eastern sky. We pointed the 18 ” telescope at it, but with its narrow field of view we could only gaze at part of the moon at a time. With the haze and the low contrast, only washed out moonscape was visible. An eclipsed moon is best witnessed with the naked eye or from binoculars.

We found Mars and Saturn in open patches of the sky. Saturn was sharper than I’ve seen it in while. The rings and planet in sharp relief against the black velvet background. Titan and a few other moons were to be seen as well. 

A line of visitors queue around the dome and down the stairs to see the planets and M42, the Great Nebula of Orion.  We’re lucky this evening. The clouds parted and the wondrous sky was made visible.

IBM, Thy Patent Portfolio Runneth Over

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IBM people are prodigous inventors. In 2007 alone, IBM was allowed 3,125 US patents. In the period from 1993 through 2007, IBM has acquired 38,707 US patents.  I can visualize the torrents of office actions flooding out of some pipe from the USPTO into the mailroom at IBM Galactic Headquarters.

Imagine trying to enforce this collection of patents. Crimony! With this many patents- and who knows how few are abandoned- IBM must be involved in litigation almost continuously. Imagine the legions of confident, white-shirted IBM attorneys marching in lockstep, “Think!” banners streaming in the breeze!  It would be fascinating to see how they make these patents actually result in cash flow. Who knows, IBM may have the biggest patent picket fence in the universe?!

Changing Petrochemical Center of Mass

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The Middle East (ME) is currently undergoing a dramatic change in petrochemical supply and refining capacity. Multiple projects in several countries are underway that will offer greater capacity of key hydrocarbon feedstocks as well as fuels. 

The current run up in crude oil prices has produced an abundance of cash for oil producing states in the ME.  Acutely aware of the transient nature of their oil reserves, the cash generated has been applied to infrastructure. Social infrastructure as well as industrial infrastructure has been expanded in the ME with facility no doubt eased by the nationalized nature of the petroleum companies. 

In the USA, a run up in crude oil prices has not resulted in a major uptick in refinery capacity, port expansion, or the birth of new universities. Instead, US oil companies have plowed investment into new discovery activity in an attempt to sustain the current rates of consumption. Profits are channeled into CEO salary packages and to shareholders, who, in turn, go to great lengths to shelter their funds from taxes that support US infrastructure.

Saudi crackers alone are expected to add 14m tonnes/year of extra ethylene capacity by 2015. ME market share of PE and PP is expected to double by 2011. So large will the demand for ethane be that there is considerable skepticism that the full potential of the buildup will be realized.

Since ethylene comes from the cracking of ethane, and presently a large share of ethane comes from natural gas, the question arises as to the effect on natural gas prices as ethane scarcity becomes apparent.  Naphtha crackers are part of the answer to the question of supply. The US has (had) abundant natural gas and a corresponding reliance on the extraction and cracking of ethane from this resource. Elsewhere in the world, a large fraction of ethylene comes from naphtha feedstocks.

And so it is that the Saudis are building crackers to bolster their feedstock supplies. The Dow/Siam Cement JV is also addressing their ethylene supply issue with a second naphtha cracker in Map Ta Phut (ICIS, 2007, December 3-16, p 6).

The largest petrochemical complex in the world is under construction at Ras Tanura in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia.  This US$20 Bn project is being developed jointly by Dow and Saudi Aramco and is expected to come onstream in 2012. The goal is to integrate the existing Ras Tanura and Yanbu refineries into a single operation offering petroleum refining and production of value added hydrocarbons like ethylene.  Clearly, the principals have downstream conversion in mind. The project will have the first naphtha cracker in the ME and will offer ethylene cracking and aromatics capacity as well.

According to the article in ICIS, Basell claims that the ME will be the only net PE and PP exporting region by 2011.  And so it was that the petroleum scare in the first decade of the 2000’s financed and expedited the migration of dominance in the polyolefin industry to the Middle East.

Eviction Action on CNN

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On CNN this morning I happened to see a story on mortgage defaults in the Atlanta area. As the reporter spoke of the 7,000 evictions scheduled for February in Atlanta, we watched two police officers enter a house with service revolvers drawn.

No doubt there is a backstory to this particular event. All states have extensive statutes covering the resolution of landlord/tenant disputes. The statutes governing lender/mortgagee disputes is certainly full of delays in consideration of due process as well. So, the scene of the State storming into a home- through the agency of the police- is at the end of a procedural chain of events leading to forcible eviction.

But you have to ask the question- Is this heavy handed treatment of mortgagees necessary?  Are the police storming into homes with firearms drawn routinely? Maybe the mortgage lenders should be forced to go into the home and do it themselves? Maybe we should herd a pack of mortgage brokers door-to-door to do the dirty work.  This includes the industry finance geniuses and their pencil-necked B-School professors .

Evicting deadbeats is one thing.  I have done this distasteful job myself sometime back when I was stupid enough to have a rental property. It’s disturbing and ugly at the very best. But to have this finance fiasco end in such a way is a disgrace and the ethical-midgets and business cretins who devised and executed this negligent finance scheme need to see, taste, and smell the trouble they initiated. They should be dragged out of their office suites, tarred and feathered, and run out of the business community, or at least tatooed with a big red I for Imbecile on their foreheads and banned from finance for life. 

The borrowers who signed their names to such instruments should be forced to take a remedial math class where they must demonstrate a knowledge of compound interest. Exponents, people! Exponents!

USA 193

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There has been considerable buzz lately that the launch and deployment of USA 193 has somehow gone terribly wrong. Reports say that the package failed to deploy properly and it is presently in a rapidly decaying orbit that will bring it back into the atmosphere for an uncontrolled re-entry.

A credible source from our base in Shangrila tells Th’ Gaussling that something will re-enter the atmosphere soon, but it won’t be USA 193.  A decaying satellite of some sort is coming down and certain parties are anxious to blast it to pieces.  This episode may be just a bit of sleight of hand to confuse intelligence gathering organizations as to what is really up there. A three card Monte, but with rockets.

There may be some real worry about tell-tale bits of apparatus landing in an unfriendly state.  There may be worry about fuel vessels landing intact and providing a toxic hazard at the impact site.  The (methyl)hydrazine in the fuel cell may be frozen and consequently the fuel cell may not absorb heat fast enough in short re-entry time to flash off and disperse the fuel. Re-entry doesn’t char everything to cinders.

A missile intercept with the satellite may be a preventative measure, an exercise for missileers, a counterintelligence exercise, or it may be a signal to a few frisky states out there who doubt our capability and resolve. Let’s hope we’re spared the embarrassment of a miss.

On Marketing Chemicals

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If you are a marketing person in the chemical industry, the question of how-to and how-much is never far from your mind.  I’m not talking about selling pesticides or drain cleaner to consumers. I’m referring to B2B chemical sales.  Feedstocks, reagents, catalysts, additives, etc.

Management never likes to pay much for advertising and will always be skeptical of the value of ads. Yet, deep within that black heart most managers know that some advertising is necessary.

Sales to the public is demand that can be fairly easily measured. Sales in the public domain are open and lots of nifty and informative stats and trends can be compiled to help plot marketing strategy.

By contrast, sales of products that are not out in the open, or products that are part of a proprietary process leading to another kind of product are things that are somewhat problematic to understand.  Products that are uncommon or are unique to a few limited circumstances are not products that you necessarily want to promote in the mass media.

If a company makes a bracket that is used to hold a fuel flow sensor on a 1998 Buick, chances are that the product will be useless for just about every other application.  But many components on that same Buick are of a general nature and may be found on many kinds of cars.

In chemical marketing, many products are of a general nature and many are highly specific. The marketing approach for highly specialized products is necessarily more focused than that for chemicals of a more general utility. A specialized product requires that marketing people be like a Dachshund- these dogs were bred to go into burrow hole to pull out the critter that lives in there. Marketing specialty chemicals requires the same sort of proclivity.

Where do I find information about who uses what?  I search patents, SciFinder (to see who is publishing with what materials), Google, and I talk to people about what they are looking for. Purchasing people always have a list of troublesome products. Your company should have a decent customer list to draw upon.

Another approach is to do a patent search starting with a particular company AND a key word. While there is absolutely no assurance that the company is actually practicing the art that they patented, it is possible to collect a list of companies that have used your product at one time.

Finally, there is the Johnny Appleseed approach. You simple plant literature at every fertile site you can find, and you do it several times with multiple media. Brochures, emails, cold calls, websites, conferences, and technical literature.  “Technology Push” is hard work. Especially if the economy has taken a dive. It can take 3 months to 3 years for a potential customer to give you a call when they finally decide to make a query.

The marketing of obscure products is spotty business and hazardous to your wallet if you are on commission. The best circumstance is to have a portfolio of products, or a catalog. If your collection is good enough, something will always be in demand.

Scalia On Torture

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2/12/08.  Let me paraphrase what I just heard Justice Antonin Scalia say on NPR. In a replayed BBC interview, he said that he didn’t see anything in the constitution that prohibits the use of torture to get information. On the other hand, he said that the use of torture as punishment would be unconstitutional.

This is the first time I have heard this particular bit of analysis. That is the tack you’d expect him to make. A few colleagues and I had the opportunity to sit and have coffee with Scalia some years ago when he was on our campus. I left the gathering with the impression that he is a very formidable character. Defending a case in front of him would be nerve wracking.

It is worth remembering that the Supreme Court’s job is to deliberate and rule on matters of interpretation of the constitution. I would offer that the comments of a justice of SCOTUS are not to be taken as promulgation of moral authority, but rather as constitutional scholarship.

Highly civilized countries like Switzerland, The Netherlands, or Sweden have surely wrestled with the calculus of this matter. I wonder what they have concluded as to the merits of torture.  Maybe they are less squeemish about it than we are.

Addendum 2/13/08:  If you think about what torture really is, it is hard to come to the conclusion that Scalia is offering.  Interrogation torture is a circumstance wherein a person is detained and put under the requirement to disclose information.   To qualify as torture, as opposed to simple questioning, the detainee must be subject to a negative outcome. I think in the normal use of the term, merely serving time in confinement isn’t ordinarily considered torture. The customary understanding of the term includes negative treatment that produces stress, dread fear, pain and discomfort, or injury. 

You could argue that infliction of negative treatment as a result of detainee non-compliance is a form of punishment.  Infliction of negative treatment in anticipation of non-compliance would be cruelty.  To put it another way, if the infliction of pain and suffering is not a result of non-compliance, then it must be cruelty. If it is a result of non-compliance, then it it must be considered punishment.

I’ll have to disagree with Scalia’s assertion. I cannot escape the conclusion that the application of torture in questioning is either punishment or mere cruelty and therefore unconstitutional.

The notion that our form of “negative treatment” isn’t really torture is fatuous and should be abandoned. If we want to allow our elected government to torture people, then we should amend the constitution in the customary fashion to make allowances for this action. My guess is that most thinking adults will not gladly endorse a constitutional right to torture.

Droppin’ your pants for chemistry

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In my career in the fabulous world of industrial chemistry, I have had to drop my pants exactly twice in the cause of business.  The first and best time was in Japan. We had just been to the science city of Tsukuba near Tokyo. After driving all day in Tokyo traffic and shuffling around at business meetings in comically small sandals, we finally ended up at what I thought was a restaurant. Glad to get out of the car, I followed my running host through the rain and into a stone building out in the countryside. But instead of walking into a dining area, we walked straight in to a locker room!

I was about to protest that I didn’t have a swim suit when it dawned on me that birthday suits were the standard dress wherever we were going. Hmmm. Lordy, I wonder if this is co-ed? Gaijin anatomy would be the featured attraction this evening.

We padded out, barefoot and naked, into a covered outdoor area and straight into the heated pool.  It was delightful. We soaked for 45 minutes and talked about business and life in Japan. All too soon, we got out, showered, dressed, and entered the dining area.

We took our positions on the cushions on the floor by the table and were treated to an incredible meal of exotic food and drink. It was highly civilized, relaxing, and memorable experience.

The next experience is the one time I had to go home without my pants. Some years ago I was making about a kg of some material in a 12 L flask. The reaction proceded normally and all was well until I tried to disassemble the apparatus in preparation for a filtration. The flask slipped from the clamp due to the considerable weight of the halide and dropped a few inches onto the benchtop. The flask broke, discharging the contents onto the hood benchtop.  I can’t say what was in the mixture, but I can say that the solvent and residual halogen were absolutely the least of my worries.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was beyond my ability to safely handle without a Hazmo suit and supplied air.  Somehow, in the course of this, I got a smudge of reaction mixture on my pants.  The safety manager looked at me and ordered me to remove the contaminated pants, which I did.

So there I was, standing in my boxer shorts- the ones with the orange and green watermelon print- while the safety manager was standing there shaking his head laughing. He threw a tyvek bunny suit at me and walked out.

We discontinued the reaction after that event. The hazards were just too edgy, even for me. 

Latest Additions to the Gaussling Library

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In an effort to rescue books from the pulping cycle, several new additions to the Gaussling Library have been made.

Hey Rube, Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness,  Hunter S. Thompson, 2004, Simon & Schuster ISBN 0-684-87319-2.

Comments: HST in his later years. Toggles between professional football and professional politics- two savage blood sports.

The Road to Reality, A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, Roger Penrose, 2004, Vintage Books, ISBN 978-0-679-77631-4. 

Comments:  Holy Moses! I hope to glean a few crumbs of insight into my pathetic Homo Chemicus brain.

Lanthanide and Actinide Chemistry, Simon Cotton, 2006, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-470-01006-1.

Comments: Contains something that doesn’t seem to be taught anymore- descriptive inorganic chemistry!

Areas of My Expertise, John Hodgeman, 2005, E.P. Dutton, ISBN 0-525-94908-9.

Comments: An “encyclopedic” download from the authors brain. Here is a selection from the listing of our 51 states-

“Louisiana. Nickname: “The Emeril State”; Motto: “Bam!” Notes: New Orleans was the first city to offer indoor absinthe faucets, and indeed has always played a cosmopolitan and libertine ragtime beneath America’s generally dull Sousa march of rural piety … For while the state had been purchased by the US as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1802, the city itself was, for obscure reasons, placed in escrow, where it remains today, technically under the jurisdiction of Gibraltar…”