Rhubarbarita Organoleptic Trials

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Th’ Gaussling has been a lazy blogger lately.  Life has been intruding into my blogging time. 

This weekend I’m gonna try ginnin’ up a batch of Rhubarbarita’s. Rhubarb is a good natural source of oxalic acid (for the uninitiated, that was a joke).

Being from the Iowegian belt of middle earth, I have a fondness for porkchops and rhubarb pie.  I know- it’ll kill me eventually. 

Rhubarbarita Update.  I prepared ca 500 mL of rhubarb juice for formulation experiments. To a stainless steel 2 quart pot was added ~500 g of rhubarb stalks cut into chunks ~2 cm in length and taken to a reflx in a 2:1 mixture of water:Karo corn syrup with a lid on the pot to help retain volatile flavorants.  The chunks were boiled for 10 minutes whereupon they began to disintegrate.  The stalks were crushed and the resulting slurry was separated via metal strainer. The greenish solids were discarded and the resulting cloudy pink extract was charged into a sealable container and refrigerated. 

The purpose was to obtain a rhubarb syrup suitable for formulation with various liquors, Tequila in particular. Corn syrup was chosen for sweetness and viscosity. Some observations from the organoleptic trials-

  • Rhubarb juice prepared in the fashion described (vide supra) has a low flavor potency with only a small amount of tartness. It has a distinct flavor and agreeable color, but does not jump out at you.
  • Rhubarb juice has little natural sweetness, so a sweetner must be added to provide the expected mouthfeel and sweet aspect worthy of a drink fitted with an umbrella.
  • The 2:1 ratio of water to syrup is not satisfactory in regard to sweetenss or viscosity.  A 1:1 ratio should be tried.
  • As the sole flavorant, the rhubarb extract is not flavor-intense enough or exotic enough to expect repeat consumption from foo-foo umbrella drink consumers when used for Margharita formulation.
  • A properly formulated Margharita on the rocks should have good mouthfeel with sweet and tart attributes as well as a jab of citrus in addition to the exotic agave flavor of the Tequila. 
  • The addition of lime juice was found to markedly improve the organoleptic test. 

In summary, the experimental Rhubarbarita described above was judged to have an acceptable flavor, though hardly exciting or memorable.  It was found empirically that the addition of fresh lime juice contributed substantially to the overall impact of the formulation. The impact of a “bottom shelf” Tequila for the experiment is unclear at this time.

Lawyers and Plain Talk

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I am one of the odd characters who rather admires lawyers.  I have had a few occasions to be on both sides of a lawyers gun barrel and have come to admire them as a group for what they do.  Contrary to what most people believe, they do much more than simply provide exquisite obfuscation. Yes, they can generate plenty of fear, doubt, and anger. Divorce lawyers generally have a stable of enemies. But more to the point they are trained to drill down to the facts of the case.  They can pierce through the knotted fur ball of imperfect memory and slanted testamony to find the thread that connects the facts.  Well, at least some of them can.

But what is perhaps more interesting than how lawyers perform is how their clients behave around them.  If two parties are trying to plow through a complex negotiation without lawyers, for instance, it is likely that the tone of the proceedings will differ from a meeting with lawyers present.  It is practically axiomatic that once one side has their attorney present, the other side feels compelled to have theirs present as well.  This only makes sense.  If the meeting concerns contractual issues or matters of liability or indemnity, it is best to have some legal firepower to oversee agreements or disclosures. 

What happens when the attorneys are present is this. Like a startled bivalve, each side clamps down their shell and communication becomes a thin gruel of vague and hesitant exchanges.  Suddenly everthing takes twice as long because both sides have to hunker down with counsel to discuss the plan off-line.  Everyone is afraid of a slip up. Representatives of each company not only fear the other sides attorney, but their own as well.  They fear the other sides attorney for advantages they might seize, but fear their own attorney for the consequences of a blunder on their side.  Your own attorney will be able to describe your blunder in living color to management in the postmortem, so everyone is super cautious. 

What is often missing in negotiations involving lawyers is plain talk.  It often happens that in trying to be careful with disclosures and declarative statements, both sides fail to actually make a clear statement of what they want.  Consequently, each side ends up negotiating a slightly different problem.  It can take multiple meetings before everyone is on the same page negotiating the same deal. 

Sales people are configured by nature to bring home the deal.  They are inclined to do and say what it takes to git’er done. Procurement people are coy by nature and acclimated to their companies policy on purchasing. They want the best price, terms, and delivery possible.  They will want concessions from the vendor and firm agreements on inventory and pricing schedules.  They want and want and want. But in the end they have to get.  They have to make the deal because raw materials have to arrive before invoices can go out for finished goods.

In negotiation, both sides bring their magic to the table.  When lawyers are present, in my experience at least, everyone becomes so bloody careful and hesitant that a spirit of distrust can form. People become reticent to engage in plain talk. Lawyers are concerned with the “what if’s” and in fact it is their duty to make their client aware of such things. Soon after the lawyers jump in, people begin behaving like first year medical students who startle at every twinge and sniff.

The lawyers bring up the issues, but it is the duty of the experienced business manager to step back and assess the likelihood of a breach.  The mistake people often make is to get the lawyer to make the decision for them rather than use the lawyers input to assess the big picture. The lawyer gets paid irrespective of the outcome of the decision. In the end, the business person must make the business decision and live with it.

Because lawyers are involved in key negotiations, they accumulate considerable “combat time” in business transactions.  This is partly why lawyers end up on the board of directors of corporations. People feel more comfortable having them in the loop for the dicey decisions. 

An American Parliament?

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There is an interesting post at the Daily Kos by Mentarch detailing the “Eight Principles of Incompetence“. Now, I’m not sure that this list constitutes a manifesto, guiding light, or even a footnote in a Polysci text of the future.  But the author has cogently reduced to writing some observations that I have struggling to put into words. I tip my hat. 

Much has been said about the growing problem with Cheney.  There is precious little to say about this fascist that is new. Cheney is doing a fine job of self destructing without my input. Mentarch has highlighted many of Cheney’s questionable actions over time with links to www references.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that the electorate is collectively incompetent sometimes.

But I would like to observe that the USA might have been well served by a parliamentary form of government, especially in this present troubled stretch of history. I think there are merits to a system that can vote out troublesome and destructive executives like Bush-Cheney without having to wait for the election timer to run out.  Impeachment is not the same as a vote to form a new government.  And if ever the USA needed to have a different executives in government, it is now.

In fact, one has to answer the question of why parliamentary systems proliferated during the 20th century while the American model as set forth by the US Constitution remains largely limited to the USA.  Why hasn’t our system been more closely copied? Could there be a better way?

The US needs a president that is less showhorse and more workhorse. We need administrators who can manage the executive branch more effectively. And we need executives who are not beholden to absolute doctrines and are willing to re-examine their fundamental assumptions on occasion.

The Bush-Cheney epoch has had a retrograde effect on American civil liberties, privacy, the freedom of assembly, and America’s credibility as a leading force for the advance of civilization. This damage will take many people a long time to make right. 

Obviously we will not change the structure of government in the next 25 years. We will not be able to yank bad executives out of office midterm for incompetence.  Bad executives will hold on to their office for the duration, enacting laws that benefit subscribers of their particular creed. They’ll have to commit a felony and be shamed into resignation like Nixon. 

The USA needs better checks and balances to protect the republic and its diverse constituency from Trojan Horse carriers of fringe doctrines and monotonic ideologies.  I’d rather have a president who cracks the books once in a while rather than one whose sole intellectual reflex is to whisper to iron-age deities.  I’d prefer to have a president who thinks analytically rather than devotionally.

Chemical Safety- Taking the Dragon Out for a Walk

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Safety is something that everyone who handles chemical substances must come to grips with. That’s pretty obvious.  It is possible to structure prudent handling practices into policies that control how people come into contact or proximity with chemicals.  While I can’t speak for the rest of the world, in the US and EU virtually all of academia and industry have rules that govern the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and hazardous material storage. 

As a group, I have known chemists to span the range of chemical aversion from compulsive chemophobia to stuntman fearlessness.  Most chemists are in the middle ground in regard to what toxicological or energetic hazards they’ll unleash at arms length behind the sash.  

But there is risk and there is perceived risk and the difference can be quite large.   Research laboratories are places where we try to achieve understanding about the unknown.  Material hazards may not be readily apparent in advance of an experiment.  We all have our sensibilities about what’s hazardous- call it “intuition” or just “experience”- but in reality most workers need to get an occasional recalibration.  Our perception of a given risk can be spot on, overly conservative, or overly lax. 

Institutions eventually have to put boundaries on the definition of acceptable risk. In innovative industry, companies want employees to try new things. Being overly conservative with risk can lead to time consuming procedural gymnastics that accomplish only delay.  Being overly lax with risk can lead to the loss of life and facilities.  The necessary administrative skill is to encourage safe innovation. 

Researchers have physical hazards to contend with. Managers must dodge administrative hazards that can blow a project out of the water. Reseachers operate within the bounds of physical law. Managers have the fundamental forces of economics, politics, and CYA (cover your a**) in addition to physics. 

In candid moments, R&D chemists may admit that much of research seems to entail the discovery of new failure modes. The broad search of reaction space can lead the researcher into patches of higher risk activity.  It is quite possible to blunder into energetic hazards or unwittingly generate highly toxic moieties that you were heretofore unaware of.  The abstracts from a SciFinder search don’t always offer notification of such hazards, especially if you are making new chemical compounds.

I know more than a few reasonable chemists who work for companies that have attempted to extract all risk of R&D scale incidents.  All experiments have to be planned and approved by some overseeing body.  Any incident involving a fire or spill is subject to an investigation and disciplinary action is meted out based on the in-house definition of negligence. Large publically-owned commodity producers seem to be the most onerous in this regard. (This is my opinion and the reader is free to take exception).

As is not untypical of large irritable mammals, Th’ Gaussling doesn’t automatically welcome visits by the safety goonsquad.  One of my many festering conceits is that I write procedures, I don’t follow them.  Unfortunately, this is a card that you can play once or twice at most.  The best strategy for long term employment is to stay off the safety radar screen. If you have to take the dragon out for a walk, have your route planned and for gawds sake, keep it on the leash.

Burning Man

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If you are what might be called a Bohemian and have never heard of the Burning Man project, you have a treat coming. I won’t spoil it- just click in the link and navigate around to see for your self. 

A friend attended last summer but only recently did I see his pictures from the desert. It is a total immersion experience. To really understand the event, it is worth reviewing the 10 principles.  It is a very civic minded event, though in a bacchanalian way.  The pyrophoric theme brings an element of ceremoniousness and awe that seems to appeal to brain stem centers long dormant in our suburban lives.  To be in attendance means that you camp for days on a desert dry lake with nary a sprig of green to be seen anywhere. It takes endurance .

Th’ Gaussling hopes to attend in 2008.  Perhaps recent attendees can comment and set me straight in my anticipation? 

The Return of DDT?

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There is serious op-ed talk mulling the return of the insectide DDT, particularly for malaria-infected parts of the world.  What is even more interesting is that this idea has caught on in the ultra-conservative media market and has become the liberal-bashing topic du jour of media darlings like Rush Limbaugh.  Since I don’t waste perfectly good heartbeats listening to that swaggering gas bag, I have missed this “discussion”.  Suddenly, Rush is concerned about the poor and destitute in Africa. 

What has escaped discussion is the possibility that modern methods of high throughput experimentation might find permutations of the DDT “pharmacophore” that would afford something with higher activity and shorter environmental half life.  Who knows, may be this has already been done?  Maybe there is a sample of a DDT analog sitting on a shelf somewhere that has less aptitude for bioconcentration and a greater aptitude for photo or hydrolytic degradation.  Then there is the potential for substantial wealth generation for Limbaugh’s wingnut paymasters.

DDT was clearly effective in suppressing mosquito-born illness for quite a long time.  Surely there are labile analogs that are effective but less objectionable? 

Dark Energy and the Corporate Cosmology

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It is a wonder indeed to behold the awsome forces of the corporate cosmos.  Against the vacuous backdrop of mom & pop businesses and meager franchise operations are the corporate galaxies in this business universe.  There are the super massive galaxies consisting of giant business units orbiting around the central holding company. On occasion, these galaxies collide, sending fragments hurtling into space and leaving a merged core of black holes sucking dividends into the shareholder event horizon to points unknown.

I said it is a wonder to behold. But I didn’t say it is necessarily a “good” wonder.  Occasionally a fellow gets a look into that gaping maw, the churning core of the organizational furnace and sees more than he bargained for. 

To perpetuate the methodical ratcheting in of ever more profit, large corporations filter the continuous stream of applicants for people who can administer the hard-as-steel facts of corporate life.  Certain personality profiles, or folks with certain predilections, need to be advanced in the system to promulgate the mechanical and financial needs of the corporate entity.  Hatchet men and enforcers, rain-makers, and sneering sycophants seem to find these organizations and achieve buoyancy.

At some point a person will run into the reptilian brainstem (management) of the corporation.  Large, impersonal corporate management is the perfect venue for many of our brothers and sisters to express their most antisocial and misanthropic inner selves.  As long as the behaviour is in parallel with the fiduciary goals of the organization, the most vile actions are validated with flippant phrases like “business is business” or “nothin’ personal, it’s just business”. 

The seasoned employee knows that the Human Resources department, for all of the caring talk, really isn’t your friend.  HR is the mechanical arm of the corporate entity that dips into the human melting pot to stir things up from time to time, occasionally pulling out the unsuitable or the plain unlucky for a “rightsizing” exercise.  If you’re aged 50 and well up the pay scale, look out.  That mechanical arm is never far away.

Corporate life has its rewards for certain kinds of people.  Some corporate cultures are better than others. Some understand that they are institutions and have a beneficial role in the advancement of civilization. Other corporate cultures are driven only by the mathematics of growth and are essentially extractive industries charged with the rapid accumulation of wealth by the end of the present quarter.  There is always a rationale for ugly corporate behaviour and there always hordes of aspiring hard-asses trying to get in to do it.  The greedy corporation is a physical manifestation of dark human desires which supplies the tools and opportunities for the acquisitive. 

If some recent experiences are any guide, I have to conclude that civilization is still paper thin. To paraphrase a comment by another blogger, we’re only three missed meals away from anarchy.