Snow in the mountains, frost on the rooftops, sun angle is lower. Hmmm. Connect the dots …
Orbital Mechanics
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Verbal Beatings by “Professionals”
One of my pet peeves is the use of the word “Professional”. It is the ultimate lever. Or, at least the ultimate big stick. Any given cube-kibbitzer can say “Well, that just doesn’t look professional” and their flatulent comment will somehow be imbued with a kind of transcendent credibility. Other cube-sitters will piously nod their heads in agreement- “We’re concerned that the chair just doesn’t look professional”.
Management or HR can proclaim that your attitude, presentation, or apparel isn’t “professional”. The word professional is a kind of wild card, a Joker in a stack of social cards that can mean anything you want it to mean. It is a kind of peer pressure of the sort that the cool students in high school used to decide who was cool and who wasn’t. It is an upgraded “ugly stick”.
What is amazing is the extent to which it works. It is like a phaser set to stun. It stops people in their tracks. This is why I keep saying that business is part of anthropology.
Creeping Featurism: Too much Software
My big problem in life, other than being age 50 on a runaway train with the Grim Reaper, is a plurality of software. It crept up on me while I was standing there, slack-jawed and admiring of all of the pretty colors and pull-down menu’s that were a mouse click away. What a wonderous stack of riches, says I.
In any given week, I can find myself at the console of a Bruker 300 MHz NMR, an HP GCMS, an older HP GC with stand alone integrator, a TA Instruments TGA, a Cecil UV/Vis, A Perkin Elmer FTIR, two GOD**MNED cell phones, an office voicemail system, the business MRP accounting system (&$^#!#!@!), office laptop with many applications in Word, Excel, Access, Contact, GoldMine, ChemDraw, SciFinder, a telescope driven by The Sky, numerous platforms on the internet, two home computers, two cars, and, oh yes, a family. And don’t forget my cruel mistress- Chemistry.
It all adds up to a bit too much. I use perhaps the top 5-10 % at most of nearly every software on the list. The standardization imposed by Microsoft Windows does help with basic navigation, but the data workup and all of the particulars put me into an eternal state of “technological Alzheimers”. I keep asking “Now, how did that work again”?
Then there is the password issue. All of the computers I work on have some level of security, and so passwords are required to get in. Blessedly, being a networked system, my network password usually works. But passwords expire and it is a constant battle to remember all of them. But if you log onto the Aldrich catalog, or any number of other on-line systems, entry requires a password.
Each of these computerized marvels is layered like an onion with hierarchies and taxonomies unique to the miserable cluster of sods who wrote the code. These sadistic canker blossoms … whoa! I’m getting carried away here. Easy does it, skippy.
Then there are the rules- business SOP’s, IATA, DOT regs, Customs issues, TSCA, policies, lab safety, Hazmat storage, respirator training, new Homeland Security regs, flash points, HMIS numbers, Haz Waste issues.
This week I did bench chemistry, wrote an MSDS, issued and received inventory in the accounting system, defined SKU‘s, ran a few TGA‘s and FTIR’s, defined some product specifications, did competitive intelligence and worked out some costing and pricing, sent out some quotes, sat in mind-numbing meetings, took two long days to write a report, noodled through some patents, sent some products out the door that I made with my own hands, and received a few new orders.
It was a productive week in fabulous industry. They don’t call it industry for nuthin’.
Lost Comments
Sorry to a couple of commenters whose cogent additions to the blog were lost. Their comments were somehow trapped in the spam gill net and then plinked into the 12th dimension. When the God Akismet is angry, even Th’ Gausslings superior left clicking skills begin to fail.
Thorium and Methanol
As we track down the back side of the petroleum curve, we will see a transition from the alkane/alcohol fueled Otto engine to a greater reliance on electric conveyance. Here is some wishful thinking- Ethanol as a direct petroleum replacement will collapse under the weight of scrutiny as better cost data becomes available. Eventually, ethanol will be prized foremost as an oxygenate additive replacement for MTBE.
Methanol and Fischer-Tropsch hydrocarbons from coal and biomass will provide high energy density fuels for the carbon-neutral future as petroleum scarcity drives other technologies into play. The Fischer-Tropsch liquified fuels technology from 20th century pariah states (Nazi Germany and South Africa) will assume a greater role in the post-petroleum age.
Fermentation of starch-derived glucose to ethanol and CO2 is too wasteful in the end to be attactive. Fermentation of cellulosic material to acetate is more mass efficient. Esterification and reduction of ethyl acetate affords ethanol. One company, ZeaChem, (former coworkers, actually) is already working to bring this technology on stream. It remains to be seen how it will go over. I wish them well.
Electric power for the future will come from many sources. Distant, centralized power plants will channel energy across the grid to home-charged automobiles. Electrons travel fast and quietly over the lonely wire. They do not require fleets of ponderous 18-wheelers to move them around in limited quantities.
I see a future heavily reliant on electrons supplied from nuclear plants. Uranium-235 infrastructure will continue to supply fuel to nuclear plants for a long time. But the low abundance of U-235 (o.7 %) and the ever present proliferation potential of Pu-239 from this fuel cycle raises questions as to the wisdom of building U-235 nuke plants in the third or fourth tier states.
A more obscure nuclear fuel that is more abundant than uranium will see a phase-in as demand on the present nuclear fuel infrastructure exceeds supply. That fuel is Th-232. Thorium-232 is generally more abundant that uranium and has the additional benefit that it’s major isotope, Th-232 , is the nuclide of interest. Th-232 is not a fissile nuclide, but is a “fertile” isotope instead. Th-232 absorbs a neutron in a reactor seeded with U-235 or Pu-239 to provide an initial neutron flux to become Th-233, which beta decays to Pa-233 which further beta decays to U-233. It is U-233 which is the fissile nuclide. U-233 then participates in the fission chain reaction that generates the heat.
You can’t make a nuclear weapon out of Th-232, though in principle you could make one from U-233. The downside of a U-233 bomb is the high specific activity of this isotope. U-233 is intensely radioactive and poses extra problems in handling.
The economics of thorium energy is advantageous in many ways to that provided by uranium/plutonium infrastructure. Thorium is abundant in monazite formations- reportedly up to 16 % thorium oxide. The present problem with the thorium cycle is handling the intensely radioactive U-233 that remains in the spent fuel elements. Separate processing infrastructure will have to be put in place to supply reactors that burn thorium before this fuel can go forward.
An HTGR Brayton cycle reactor with a helium turbine could provide up to 50 % thermodynamic efficiency. Combine this reactor design with the potential cost savings of the more abundant Th-232, and you have a technology that is well set to provide power to keep the lights, cable TV, and the internet going into the post-petroleum age.
Check out the blog dedicated to Energy from Thorium. I’m writing about thorium because I think it is an important fuel and it needs to find its way to mainstream thinking.
American Parliament, part II
In a previous posting, I daydreamed about an American system that more resembled a parliamentary system. The motivation for this is that our executive branch has apparently gone astray with the presidents military ambitions in nation building under the guise of the war against terrorism. The ability to dissolve a government off the election cycle and repopulate it with different characters seems like a desirable attribute.
Viet Nam and GW-II are examples of ideological pageantry lead by stubborn presidents. Like the fighter pilot who is so target fixated on his opponent that he follows him into the ground, we cannot allow our presidents to drag the country into self-inflicted disaster.
As suggested by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the noises now coming from the White House concerning Iran resemble the noises made by the same White House about Iraq. What is strange about this distressing circumstance is this: The checks and balances that are provided by the constitution seem to be inadequate to restrain the executive. The congress seems to be genuinely flummoxed.
Despite popular sentiment and wise counsel by very well regarded citizens, the president continues to press for ideological conquest in the middle east. Despite the floundering dollar, no-child-left-behind-except-for-4-million-uninsured-kids, and tera-dollars of debt accumulated in the “War Against ______”, our executive continues to press on within the bounds of the constitution.
The question is this: Does the US Constitution provide adequate checks and balances against the abuse of power?
I suppose it is inevitable that a president would be elected who didn’t have both oars in the water. Who knows if this guy really is disturbed. But the executive retains substantial control of the military. The president is able to amass a vast force of civilian security contractors who seem to be beyond the audit of the congress. Does your view change when they pack weapons and answer only to the executive branch? Did the framers miss this possibility?
The US has a president that is hell-bent on performing a script that is neither transparent nor mandated by anything other than the enchanting voices of a few dark characters who are temporarily burrowed in the White House. We’ve had 2 terms of a war president. It’s enough.
Kunstlers Most Excellent Rant
If you don’t read Jim Kunstlers blog, Cluster***k Nation, you’re really missing out on some juicy stuff. Thanks to the all-seeing eye of Uncle Al for this particular post. Kunstler writes with a manic urgency rather like Hunter S. Thompson (and … Uncle Al). I’m not calibrated for the negative spin on the mortgage disaster that he makes. Perhaps others can comment.
Feral Chemists. Gaussling’s 4th Epistle to the Bohemians.
Like the house cat that returns to the wild state when it leaves the house, chemists can go feral when they get out into the world. The process begins the morning after graduation from college. No exams to study for, no lab writeups to hand in. Being enrolled in coursework has a kind of edifying effect; a kind of regimentation that keeps one true to the discipline.
Human behaviour resembles a gas in some ways- we expand to occupy the space available to us. If bench space is available, we’ll find something to put on it. If condensers are in abundance, we’ll find a way to hook them up to something. If other distractions are available, our consciousness will expand into that space.
Some chemists quit learning after graduation. They lose their gusto for the subject. They acquired their bag of tricks in grad school and are quite content to stick with those tools for the duration of their careers. They become an intellectual couch potato- a 9 to 5 technocrat. Some companies are unaware of the value of professional interaction and refresher coursework. Other companies just do not care.
A wise chemist once told me that the worst thing you could do in your career was to be a chemist in a company where chemistry was not the main activity. He was an IBM chemist and he spoke from bitter experience.
One of the most valuable assets of a scientist is curiosity and keeping it well honed is crucial. Industry can bleed you of all of your professional enthusiasm if you let it. Or, it can tempt you to go to the dark side- the business end. Industry can exhaust you with endless administrative requirements and supervisory duties. Insane deadlines and fickle management can bind you to seemingly impossible projects like a modern Sisyphus. You’ll wear leg irons bearing the letters SAP, and speak in tongues- TSCA, MSDS, ROI, and CYA.
Through the years, unopened journals stack up on the floor. You can’t remember what an ACS meeting was like. The paper in your college textbooks begins to yellow, and you become aware of your prostate.
But the feral chemist has to resist. You have to rage against the stupifying isolation and indifference. It is important to periodically experience that rush of adrenaline that you get when some new concept opens before your eyes. Open a journal and don’t set it down until you learn something new!
TED
Check out this video of Daniel Dennett talking about dangerous memes. Dennett is a philosopher specializing in the study of conciousness. In another TED conference, he offers insights on this difficult topic. Our consciousness is not a universal chip set capable of processing all inputs with equal fidelity. In fact, our consciousness has rather serious limitations.
The TED conference videos are extremely rich in insights. It is worth browsing the site for good talks.
The mechanism of consciousness is fascinating- it is one of the most important of all unresolved problems. The existence of consciousness means that the universe is self-aware to some extent and is able to do experiments on itself. It also means that the universe is capable of acts that are set into motion by the compulsions of creatures, rather than the direct search for ground state.
These acts are executed through the agency of physics, but sentient beings have altered the notion of spontaneity. Life forms are able to counter the natural direction of entropy (locally) by channeling large amounts of energy to achieve improbable ensembles of atoms. With large energy inputs, creatures can move about, reproduce, or send robots to Saturn.
Ok, this is obvious, but it remains a rather curious attribute of the universe.
Uranium Business Returning to Critical Mass
There is a saying that opportunity doesn’t beat the door down, it only knocks quietly. So it seems to be with uranium. The American uranium extraction business took a big hit when the Three Mile Island accident happened in the late 1970’s. Nuclear power growth was tabled and only recently has it shown signs of recovery.
With few exceptions, the rebound of the North American nuclear fuel business is largely invisible, apparent only if you go digging for signs. One exception is happening in north central Colorado, near the town of Nunn. A Canadian company, Powertech Uranium Corp., has acquired mineral rights to a sizeable parcel of land northeast of Ft Collins along the eastern side of I-25. It is called the Centennial Project and circumscribes an ore body estimated to hold 5.1 to 9.6 million pounds of U3O8, according to a technical report posted in the public domain at the Powertech website. The extent of U3O8 recovery would depend on the percent cutoff level of acceptable ore. The ore body is a discontinuous series of subsurface deposits with the top of the uranium mineralization at ca 82 feet below the surface.
According to the report by Gorski and Voss, the average grade of the ore is 0.094 % and the average thickness of the vein is 8.8 ft (Table 1, latest estimate). Powertech has mentioned the possibility of in-situ extraction with bicarbonate leach as the means of removal of the mineral value rather than underground mining.
Naturally, the locals have not warmed up to the news that there might be a uranium mining operation in the area. A local group, Coloradoans Agains Resource Destruction (CARD), has put up a website (NunnGlow) and are vigorously lobbying against the development. In particular, the matter of leaching has brought a large negative sentiment to the forefront and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) has intervened with the NRC to allow a more lengthy public comment period in the permitting process. Locals are rightfully concerned about their aquifer and are entitled to some straight talk about the matter.
While I am generally in favor of uranium mining, I have to agree with NunnGlow in regard to contamination of the aquifer by this in-situ leaching process. Powertech needs to offer some compelling evidence that the aquifer won’t be harmed by their leaching operations.
Lamentations on Chemistry 