The Murder Room

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I have attached a cast picture of our recent production of The Murder Room.

murder-room-cast.jpg

It turns out that there is a small number of people walking around who do several plays per year.  They have no real designs on Hollywood or Broadway.  They do dinner theatre or community theatre just for the pure joy of it.  Despite the fact that the work is gratis, local, and not run by Spielberg or some other big name, it is nontheless a sizeable ordeal to prepare for. 

I am grateful that not a single bit of rotten vegetation was thrown my way and that at least some of my lines drew a smattering of laughter.  I did it with a British accent somewhere between Terry Thomas and Rex Harrison. 

The sensation of this kind of performance was what I would imagine ballroom dancing might be like. A fluid and coordinated dance of repartee, movement, and subtext. To have performed with experienced actors was great experience and I am eager to do it again.

Halogenate with extreme prejudice

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Reacting one element with another to make a compound. How much more “elemental” can it get? No solvent and no waste, just element on element at Venusian temperatures. But, an organikker doing inorganic synthesis?  Is this a Coen brothers movie? What strange overlap of events lead to this redox redux?

Paracelsus would have been pleased at this transformation, though his interests with this compound might have diverged from mine. Whereas I as a modern chemyst would add a nucleophile to my blessed conjugation of elements, Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus) would probably have more mundane applications like the treatment of consumption or perhaps an indelicate medicament for that tell-tale abscess.

After a career of conducting elaborate procedures for the preparation of strange organic compounds, it is refreshing to spend a month performing a non-incandescent combustion of elements.  There is joy in doing a thing well, taking the elements to their endpoint as fast as the equipment will allow. Squeezing maximum performance from the system and myself. It is a kind of poetry in motion. 

Frequently wrong, but never in doubt

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More and more I find myself afflicted with fellow travellers along the timeline who are never in doubt of their judgement, but they are frequently wrong nonetheless.  There has to be some archetype from literature or Greek mythology that symbolizes this. Maybe there is some character from a Greek tragedy who, as a leader, was destined for a fall as a result of such a trait. Perhaps someone out there has a nominee for this position.

One sees examples of this in business organizations not infrequently. Some openly discuss their views, but often with the presumption of making a disclosure of “what we’re going to do”.  Others sit quietly, rarely contributing to open discussions where ideas are put on the table for dissection.  These fellows might listen to others debate, but they prefer to sit quietly and observe while others reveal the content of their thinking. Rather than adopt or synthesize new concepts openly, they will tend to note commentary that aligns with their pre-existing view. This is where that most loathsome of characters, the yes-man, can gain a strong foothold in an organization. 

Howard be thy name

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A few posts ago I wrote about buying chemicals from Asia. I mentioned the weakness with shipping. But there are other snags in the system to contend with.  Recently I received a parcel of non-hazardous material that I bought from China. I have been trying to source this stuff for years and I finally found a candidate vendor. We already make the stuff, but we’re short on capacity.  The qual sample was a white granular product and was packed in thin plastic zip-lock sandwich baggies jammed into a used stereo speaker box (!!@#*!). Hell, the foam part for protecting the speaker was still in the box. OK, not smart. And it was mislabeled as some other product. That was the really dumb part.

Torqued about this, I fired off a grim and terse torpedo-gram expressing my shock and dismay at their poor judgement in these matters.  The vendor rapidly replied, exclaiming in much poorer English this time, that since it was a colorless solid product, they believed there would be “problems” shipping it to the USA.  Well, let’s see … hmmm.  It is TSCA listed, it is non-hazardous, no conceivable abuse issues, it is a salt so it won’t burn, but if you dropped a 200 kg drum of it on a cockroach, the cockroach might die.  Yeah, they thought it would be suspected as an illegal substance so they would be clever and ship it under another name. But it is ACS grade material completely innocent of any conceivable abuse potential.  So by being “clever” about it, they revealed their facility with underhandedness.  How can I go forward with a vendor willing to do this crap?

So, you might be tempted to think “Golly, they’re some pretty dishonest chaps”. Well, I’m not sure yet. They may be redeemable. Thank Howard, I myself have been given many second chances. It’s a karma thing. So we’ll inch along and see how they do on the next round. I suspect they’re just naieve in these matters.  Never attribute to malice what you can first explain by ignorance.

Moral of the story- just be honest and above board in all of your business dealings. Ya can’t fall off the floor.

Update:  It was suggested that this is actually a ploy by the exporter to get around import duties.  Well, I’ll happily pay the duties rather than monkey with this sort of thing. Crimony.

Chemical Logistics

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Any chemical company manager will have to admit that order fulfillment isn’t over until the product is in the hands of the customer.  Chemical manufacturing isn’t just about running reactions in big pots.  It’s about attracting a skilled, reliable, and safe work force. It is about building a supply chain for the timely delivery of raw materials. It is about executing the manufacture of products in spec the first time through. It is about warehousing raw mats and products and keeping the stream of wastes moving through the system.

Chemical manufacturing requires the careful management of cash flow by minimizing costs and maximizing profits. The business office must attend to receivables and collect payments in the most expeditious way that customers will tolerate. This is no different that any other manufacturing arena- sprockets, fur caps, or rocket motors.

One of the key jobs required of any chemical company is the matter of managing logistics.  That is, managing the timely transport of raw materials onto the site and the transport of products off the site. So how does this affect the chemist??

The tender shoot studying chemistry in their junior year of college may not know it yet, but if their path is in the fabulous world of business, then some aspect of logistics may be in their future.  What kind of chemist would need some knowledge of shipping? Well, project managers, sales managers, business development managers, plant managers, procurement managers, etc.  All these positions are often filled with chemists and all have to have some knowledge of this topic.  And how does one get this knowledge? Why, on-the-job training, of course.

If you have read many of my posts, you know that I tend to prattle on about this. There is a reason. It is not uncommon for a sales person or a business development manager to spend no small amount of time with a customer trying to work out how the product will be delivered.  The transport of materials is complicated in proportion to the hazard and the chemical sensitivity to decomposition. 

Let’s say that you are in the chemical business and you are just starting the custom mfg of a trialkylphosphine.  The customer will state that they want say, 100 kg, of their R3P with a list of specifications (e.g., 99% in R3P, oxides < 0.1 %, etc, Karl Fisher water 200 ppm) for their new product. The customer has accepted the quoted price and the delivery date. Hmmm. Price, delivery, and specs. Sounds like everything is in place.

So, the question then arises: How are you going to ship it? Glass bottles? Drums? Polyethylene totes? Whoops, the material is excruciatingly air sensitive, so charging and discharging the product will have to be done airlessly. Sounds like a cylinder is just the thing. But what are the materials of construction? I seem to recall that phosphines are ligands, so can we really use a steel cylinder? Soft steel? Stainless steel?

But there is yet another question.  Do we offer the phosphine neat or as a solution? If the neat R3P is a liquid, we can move it around airlessly and charge a cylinder with it. If it is a solid, then it could be a serious problem to transfer it from a filter to a shipping container. How will you or the customer actually handle it? This is the kind of detail that chemists might find themselves groping with. If it is a solid, the customer might have to consider receiving it as a solution in a non-interfering solvent.

Then the matter of transporting it arises. In the present epoch of security theatre, air transport of any quantity might be banned. So, surface shipment will be needed. The matter of heated shipment may arise if freezing or precipitation is an issue. The last thing anybody needs is a cylinder full of precipitated solids in it.  Remember, if you are shipping product in a heated trailer in the winter, you may have stiff competition from other customers who need to ship their lettuce or strawberrys. In some locations, reefer trucks as they are sometimes called may be in short supply.

OK. So you’ve specified a reefer trailer for heated transport of the goods. Let’s say that the product solution will crash out precipitate at 15 C. In the trailer everything is just fine. Fine that is until the shipper reaches a transfer point and moves the product out onto the loading dock where it sits in the freezing weather for a few hours waiting to be put into another trailer. Or it sits in unheated warehouse space for a while.

Eventually, the cylinder of R3P solution arrives and, sadly, has precipitated and won’t come out of the cylinder. So there you are. The customer is unhappy and you now face having to haul it back and recover the product. These are the kinds of problems that chemists on the business side (the plow horses) can find themselves dealing with. Of course, the R&D chemists (the show horses) are rarely bothered with such things.

In low gear

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Th’ Gaussling is in low gear this week due to extra-curricular activities. I’ve been in rehearsal since October for a play that opened last night- The Murder Room by Jack Sharkey. It’s community theatre, which is the only way a hack like myself would have had a chance. This is my first time on stage and it has been quite an experience. Acting is a lot like flying an airplane- it is exhilirating and terrifying all at the same time.  And like flying, you can fall from such a height that it takes a long time to smack into the ground.

Acting requires a type of learning that is rather different from learning chemistry. First, there is rote memorization. There is no escape from knowing your lines. With experience the actor can develop the character around the structure of the dialog. 

It is nowhere near as easy as it looks, and it does require a large investment in time and effort. But in the end, performing with other actors and pulling off a complicated show is quite satisying. 

Keystone Cops in Boston

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The mind still boggles at the recent cartoonish response of Boston authorities to the “viral” marketing campaign by Turner Broadcasting.  Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network evidently sponsored a targeted marketing campaign for its “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” program.  In doing so, their 20-something hirelings violated local sign ordinances by hanging electronic signs on bridges and that is where it stood until police were called and one of the displays was “disarmed” by a controlled bomb squad explosion.

The tipping point came when someone looked at the sign and saw a circuit board, wires and something that turned out to be a battery.  Evidently trained in the school of television drama bomb squadding, the officer on the scene triggered the terror response protocol.  God help us if this local constable ever looks in his computer and sees wires, capacitors, and other mechanisms.

I have witnessed much smaller versions of this first hand.  What appears to be an emergency leads to the arrival of the police and the fire department. This is the part where civil liberties fly out the window, and often enough, sensibility as well. The police establish a perimeter and secure the “scene”.  If the incident involves materials unknown to the police, then they will notify the fire department and then pull the trigger on the hazmat team.  If there is an object that seems suspicious, then they may trigger the bomb squad people. 

Obviously, the fine people who serve the public in the capacity of emergency response or law enforcement are trained and dedicated to their jobs. But what happens is that these people are given precious little latitude in their range of responses to “situations”.  What happens then is that they tend to do what is called erring on the side of safety, which means that when in doubt, call the bomb squad or the hazmat people. 

But when a situation leads to the arrival of the bomb squad, then the natural conclusion of the authorities is that whatever caused this response looks like a crime and should be so investigated. So, irrespective of the merits of the officer-on-the-scenes judgement, there might arise a presumption of foul play and the whole law enforcement apparatus is activated to supply evidence to the district attorney for the filing of charges on the alleged wrongdoer.  In fact one might cynically argue that, especially in these dubious circumstances, it is in the best interest of your career to be able to rationalize the release of these resources as a response to criminal activity. 

So, these two hapless fools who hung the signs in Boston are now at the pointy end of the law enforcement stick and the authorities seem to be bent on saving face through the exercise of grim and officious talk of terrorism. What a mess.

Astronaut burns up on re-entry to life

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The sad story of astronaut Lisa Nowak continues to unfold.  This thing seems to have many layers of complexity to it. It is interesting to see how the news media have approached it. People in the news business seem to have a set of tools in their bag from which they shape stories.  Some reporters are grilling NASA about fraternizing policy while others focus on the lurid detail about the diaper.  Perhaps someone will eventually make the connection with the Mercury program and how the astronauts wore diapers on these early flights.  It is just a concession to the pragmatics of long endurance travel. Pretty clever, really.  But regardless of her clever determination, using violence to resolve this kind of conflict has no valid excuse. 

It is rather painful to watch.