Miscellaneous Friday

I was temporarily unemployed for a couple of months at the end of last year, but I never considered expressing my disappointment in the same manner as this unemployed chemist. I cannot imagine this sort of thing looking good on a resume, but I’ve been wrong before.
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Now I need to rant a bit.

Yesterday, I needed to download a software driver for a National Instruments GPIB interface card from the company’s website. It should have been a quick 50K download at most, requiring only about a minute of my “valuable” time. Annoyingly, the entire process took 45 minutes -- time that could have been better spent searching the Web for more antics by unemployed chemists. First, the website required me to register before downloading the file. Swine! I already paid for the hardware! Forcing me to register just to download the accompanying software is sooooooo last millennium. Check out your competitors’ web sites. And what’s with all the “required” questions? I can understand asking for my email address so I can be spammed, but do you really need the name of my firstborn?

After being granted access to the download page, I discovered the “driver” file was over 108MB. WTF??? Are they sending an operating system along with the driver? Please: make non-essential utilities a separate download. If I had been downloading this from home, it would have not been that big a deal, but my company’s firewall insisted on scanning the entire 108MB file for porn and viruses, and the scanner is not very fast.

Anyway, I feel better now.
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Our governor here in Michigan has been desperately trying to make the state less reliant on the automotive industry. For the past few years, she’s been pushing to make Michigan the biodiesel capital of the world. Last year, she was promoting solar cell technology, partly since we have several companies (Dow Corning, for example) which are in the photovoltaic arena. And yesterday, she announced a program designed to (hopefully) make Michigan the nation’s leader in the manufacturing of lithium ion batteries for electric and hybrid cars. $300M in tax credits, among other things, with an eye on grabbing a piece of the $2 billion earmarked by the federal government for advanced battery projects. Basically, she want s Michigan to be the "alternative energy" state -- not to be confused with the "alternative lifestyle" state. According to Governor Granholm, “We are going from rust to green.” Will this work? I don’t know, but all three areas have need of inorganic chemists and that’s definitely okay by me. All the chemistry based jobs listed around here are pharmaceutical based.

The Power of TV

One of the advantages of a “career transition” is that it allows one to watch alarmingly high amounts of TV during the day (while doing Internet job searches, of course). And while I appreciate having been granted this boon, it’s probably not worth the I.Q. points I’ve had to give up for the privilege. Lately, my wife has developed the habit of watching HGTV (Home & Garden TV) whenever she finds nothing else worth watching. Unfortunately, this means we have HGTV on at least 6 hours a day.

(Yes, we are one of those families where the TV is on almost continously all day, even if no one is watching. Frankly, the silence generated by turning it off scares the hell out of me.)

Long time readers know that I’m into gardening (garden link here), so I used to enjoy HGTV, but lately they’ve been ignoring the garden aspect and concentrating solely on houses. Remodeling houses, appraising houses, selling houses, buying houses, swapping houses -- it doesn’t take a genius to realize that all these shows are going to look the same. I realize the housing crisis has led to a renewed interest in how to sell your house -- or how to remodel it if you can’t -- but you can only remodel a kitchen so many ways. You can only gasp at poorly decorated homes so many times. You can only laugh at a homeowner’s first experience with a hammer so many times. And that, basically, is a summation of about 80% of the shows. The other 20% involves laughing at the tacky artistic remodeling touches added by the show’s designers, which would never see the light of day if the owners were actually paying for them.

However, what really drive me crazy are the “What is my house worth?” shows. First of all, either these shows were taped 2 years ago or else the realtors who supposedly “appraise” the houses are incompetent fools, or liars, or incompetently foolish liars. In almost every case, the “supposed” appreciations of these houses are outrageously high. It’s not uncommon for an owner to have purchased a house 3 years ago for $300k, added $100k in upgrades, and then being told it’s now worth $800k. Even in the housing boom, that would have been remarkable. But these days? Who are they kidding? Obviously there are certain locations within in the United States where housing prices are climbing (at least, so far), but unless these shows are only filming in those specific areas, there is no way these prices are real.

What really appalls me though, is the reason for these appraisals. When the owners are asked the reason behind the appraisal, the most common answer is that they are considering a major renovation and want to know if the house has appreciated enough to pay for that upgrade. Morons! Either you have the money or you don’t! Using a “supposed” increase in the price of your house to pay for a renovation is like pulling money out of your savings account and thinking you just made a profit. Don’t these people realize that it was this kind of “logic” that got us into the housing crisis in the first place. Basing financial decisions on artificially inflated values of real estate is stupid.

Seriously, some of these people need to be kept out of the gene pool!

I feel better now.

Tomorrow -- Real Science: Nostradamus on the History Channel!

Chemistry Journalism?

I try to spend some time every day browsing through the various science reporting websites so as to receive my daily dose of science. I generally find them informative, but today I was greatly disappointed with the level of their quality. Science Daily reported the discovery of “an unusual molecule that is essential to the atmosphere's ability to break down pollutants, especially the compounds that cause acid rain.” "Okay," I thought, "that sounds interesting. I'll check it out." So I read through the entire article, several times, looking for the new molecule until I finally realized the molecule was never identified.

"Okay," I thought, "the writer screwed up. I'll just google some other articles."

Googling did indeed reveal many, many other sites which had covered this story. Unfortunately, it quickly became obvious that other sites weren't describing the molecule either. In fact, the articles were all identical copies of the original Purdue press release. No additional explanations, no deep dives into the subject matter, nothing but simple copying and pasting.

Now that is just plain laziness. I realize the internet is one huge morass of plagiarism -- it's not uncommon to find the same page duplicated over and over again when googling -- but I expect a little more from science news sites that are updated on a daily basis. At the end of the Science Daily article it reads: "Adapted from materials provided by Purdue University." By adapt, I assume they mean reformatted.

Of course, all this occurred because the Purdue press release had failed to identify the molecule. A full color ball and stick model of the molecule was presented, which the science sites dutifully reproduced, but there was a problem. I present the figure and its caption here.

Image caption: Scientists at Purdue and Pennsylvania universities have discovered an atmospheric molecule that is essential to the breakdown of pollutants in the atmosphere. The molecule, which had not been seen before, is unusual because it has two hydrogen bonds. This image shows the structure of the molecule, with the blue ball being a nitrogen atom, red representing hydrogen atoms, white representing oxygen atoms, and the yellow clouds showing the location of the double hydrogen bonds. (Purdue News Service image/Joseph Francisco)

So the molecule was O-H-NH2? That sure looks like one hell of a reactive molecule. Who cares about a double hydrogen bond? We have a hydrogen with two covalent bonds -- a much bigger story. Or maybe the person writing the caption just got the colors for hydrogen and oxygen switched. I was able to figure out the molecule's identity by looking at the title of the abstract tacked on at the end of the press release. If any of the website writers had actually bothered to read this press release while pasting, this mistake would have easily been caught. BTW, the new molecule is an HONO2 + OH moiety, held together by hydrogen bonding.

I'm not trying to dump on Purdue here, mistakes like this can happen. I’m just disappointed that none of the science sites I frequent picked up on it.

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Note: while writing this I noticed that the Science Daily report did list a link to the paper which included the terms OH and HONO2, so it wasn't totally necessary to go to the Purdue site to figure out what was going on.

Cell Phone Rant

Warning: this is a non-chemistry related rant.

Last year, I switched from a monthly cell phone plan (Verizon) to a fixed rate per minute plan (AT&T). My wife had been tracking my cell phone use patterns and had convinced me I would pay less on a pay per minute plan. So far she has been right, although as more and more people at work are beginning to call my cell, that advantage is beginning to disappear. The increase in work related calls is not totally unexpected since I am currently existing in a hybrid state, as I resonate between 3 different locations and the cell is often the easiest way to catch me.

Pay per minute plans tend to make you acutely aware of the length of your calls, especially since AT&T graciously sends you a note after each call telling you how much you just spent. These plans are also the source of much aggravation as you notice all the little things the phone company does to drain your phone card of money as quickly as possible. I don’t mind that AT&T rounds calls up to the next minute, but how do they manage to make sure my calls always last X minutes and 1 second? Slightly more annoying is the phone’s user interface, which is designed to maximize the number of times one can accidentally sign on to the AT&T web store (for which you are charged). And nothing is more annoying than hanging up the phone, seeing the “call ended” message, and then a second or two later seeing a “call resumed” message as the timer begins counting again. WTF? The other party has already hung up. Why is my phone reinitiating the call?

However, these minor annoyances are not why I am writing today. My rant is directed at the callers themselves -- in particular, two people at work that are most responsible for my phone card drainage. It’s not just that they constantly call with no real purpose in mind (Hello! The company does have email, you know?). The real problem is that these two guys simply don’t know how to end a phone conversation. Seriously, phone calls that should barely last a minute drag out for 5 or 6 minutes because they can’t bring themselves to say goodbye.

Cell Phone Drainer (CPD): “Ken, I’ve got those samples you wanted.”
Me: “Great, I’ll come on over to pick them up.”
CPD: (Pause……) “I didn’t have any trouble making them.”
Me: Were you expecting any trouble? You’ve already made dozens of them.”
CPD: (Pause…..) ”No, I just wanted you to know that I didn’t have any trouble.”
Me: OK, I’ll come on over right now.”
CPD: (Long pause……) “Anything happening over in your area?”
Me: “Uhhh, no. Thanks for making the samples. I really need to start working on them.”
CPD: (Pause…..) ” Do you want to come over and get them now?”
Me: “Yes, I’m on my way. Thanks.
CPD: (Long awkward pause….) ”I’ll be at my cubicle.”
Me: “Yes, I know.”
CPD: “Have you been enjoying the weather lately?”

I start watching the timer on my phone.

Me: “It’s been okay. OK, I’m leaving now.”
CPD: (Pause…..) ”The samples should all be fine, I didn’t have any problems.”
Me: (Coworkers in nearby cubicles begin to notice my desperation) “Ummm, I really need to use the bathroom, so I think I have to go now.”
CPD: “You want me to leave the samples at my cubicle?”
Me: “Yes!”
CPD: (Longer pause….) “How do you think the project is going?”
Me: “I think I just heard an explosion coming from the lab. I should really go.”
CPD: (Pause…..) “Do you want a printout for the samples?”
Me: “I’m sure I hear screaming. I should really go now. Talk to you when I get there.”
CPD: “OK….If there’s nothing else…I’ll be at my cubicle….with the samples. You can pick them up anytime. Are you coming over right now?”
Me: “Bye.”
CPD: (Pause….) ”Uhhh… bye…. I’ll… I’ll talk to you later."
I hang up and my cell phone tells me I've been on for 4 minutes and 1 second. Damn!!!

I tend to ignore his phone calls now but then he just leaves messages which require me to call my voice mail (for a fee) to erase. Anyway, thanks for reading. I feel much better now.
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For all those analytical chemists who managed to make it through that rant, here is a link to a music video for those interested in automated pipetting. Woo hoo!!

Change Isn't Always Good!

This is a rant about chemistry. Actually it’s a rant about chemistry and progress. OK, it’s really a rant about progress which is ruining the natural order of things.

I’ve always loved fireworks. Every June I buy a nice assortment of these lovely incendiary devices and every July I launch them for the whole neighborhood to see. We’re talking about a tradition here. Being a chemist meant I understood many of the reactions taking place. Red explosions indicate the presence of strontium or lithium, green indicates barium, blue means copper, and yellow means sodium. (OK, so I’ve simplified it a bit). Of course this means that a fair amount of toxic compounds are being injected into the atmosphere, but really, is that too much of a price to pay for such wonderfully colorful explosions? Now researchers are trying to develop green (as in environmentally sound) fireworks . Instead of depending upon the energy released during the oxidation of carbon, these new fireworks depend upon the decomposition of metastable, nitrogen-rich compounds such as the tetrazoles and their derivatives (five-membered rings with four nitrogens and one carbon) and tetrazines (six-membered rings with four nitrogens and 2 carbons). They’ve succeeded in duplicating all the colors except for green.

These new-fangled fireworks leave me a little uneasy. Fireworks have always been in the domain of inorganic chemistry and, dammit, they should remain that way. Setting off fireworks which lack heavy metals is to invite anarchy. Keep your hands off my fireworks, organic chemists!
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I also love Suzy-Qs. Always have and always will. But over the years, Hostess has slowly been changing the Susy-Q recipe. Although I’m sure the drive to use less expensive ingredients has played its part in this travesty, the desire to make this combination of carbohydrates and fats appear less harmful has led to use of heart-healthy oils. (This misguided attempt to make Suzy-Qs more healthy is like trying to make a nuclear bomb more environmentally friendly.) I haven’t thought about this for years, but I was reminded of it while reading a rant over at the Bad Astronomy blog concerning the quality of Ho-Hos now that their trans-fats have been lowered to zero.

And while I’m on my soapbox, what the hell happened to good movie theatre popcorn? Ever since they replaced the coconut oil they were using, it hasn’t been worth eating. This is progress? Here’s an idea for you organic chemists. Develop a compound (nontoxic, please!) which smells just like popcorn popped in coconut oil and sell it to theatres or to makers of microwave popcorn. You will make a fortune.