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Home Chemistry An Endangered Hobby in U.S.
Disoculated writes "Wired is running an article entitled "Don't Try This at Home" discussing how that increasing paranoia about terrorism and liability is making it nearly impossible to become involved in any chemistry related hobby in the United States. Sure, the innovative will try to work around these types of limitations, but are we teaching our kids to be afraid of science?"
read a few days ago, great article. makes me wanna buy some explosives !
From TFA :
Suddenly police officers and men in camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. "Come out with your hands up immediately, Miss White!" one of them yelled through a megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear. Recalling that June morning in 2003, Lazar says, "If they were expecting to find Osama bin Laden, they brought along enough guys."
The target of this operation, which involved more than two dozen police officers and federal agents, was not an international terrorist ring but the couple's home business, United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, a mail-order outfit that serves amateur scientists, students, teachers, and law enforcement professionals.
"Freedom and Justice for All" is a registered trademark of The United States Govt Inc. Not available in all areas.
I had this chemistry teacher, real mad scientist type. He showed us how to make gunpowder, which was cool. Pity he left before I hit 6th form, as he showed them how to make trinitrotoluene...
I wonder if this would mean he could no longer show his students how to make high explosives.
We've become a management culture since the Cold War ended. The emphasis on science and technology has been replaced with an emphasis on managerial skills and the joys of outsourcing. And since the amount of money being spent on educating our young has diminished, and you often get the proverbial gym teacher teaching chem lab, is it any wonder why science scores are down?
Napalm is nature's toothpaste
And, dangerous, too. My eyebrows still haven't grown back and no one has seen the cat since.
Well, while conventional chemistry might have gone the way of the rotary phone, there are still those playing with chemicals in their houses - how about all those meth labs?
"You killed my yogurt!" --Fred Fredburger
The liabilities incurred might come from local law enforcement if they think you're setting up a meth lab or it might even be your neighbor's kid comes over and breaths in some fumes that his asthma doesn't handle so well.
A lot of the scenarios I'm thinking of involve the chemical and physical sciences. I don't think that being proficient in computer sciences will raise any government eyebrows unless you're doing something truly illegal. In the end, I think we're mostly seeing a decline in getting-your-hands-dirty simply due to the fact that it's a mess & Americans are pretty lazy. I personally work a lot and when I get home, I'm not in the mood to set up a particle accelerator. I think that the armchair sciences like computers, political, economic, statistics, mathematics, etc. will probably be the focus of new hobbiests.
From the Wired article: Great, just one more federal agency for me to fear/hate. You just made the list, CPSC!
As for the USAToday article entitled U.S. could fall behind in global 'brain race', I think that's crap. I'll quote a few parts of it and add my commentary: One word, "population." How about you translate those figures into engineers graduated per capita? China = 500,000:1,306,313,812. India = 200,000:1,080,264,388. United States = 70,000:295,734,134. That's roughly 1:2612 for China, 1:5401 for India and 1:4224 for the United States. Those numbers aren't bad at all, especially if you took other countries. Now, if you want to argue about the rigor of the courses, I'd say that varies from place to place. Although this looks bad economically, I don't see how this relates to the topic at hand. In no way can you measure a country's education and gifted students.
There was very little for me to agree with in this article.
My work here is dung.
Is it just me, or is /. consistently a day or two behind digg?
The submission asks whether people are afraid of science. The question should be, are people afraid to use caustic, explosive, and potentially fatal chemicals without safety procedures or training? I sure hope the answer is yes, and I would consider that a good thing.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I recently looked into buying a dc-dc converter to run my laptop in a plane. These things are pretty expensive and my guess is that I could build one for $20 AUD or so.
The problem is that airport security people are not going to believe that my bundle of components in a jiffy box which I soldered up myself is not a bomb, whereas the proper device from the shop at four times the price at least looks legit.
Then I wondered what it is going to be like in the near future where the flight control system probably runs windows CE or similar and I rock up to business class and start some software which I wrote myself.
Software may be a terrorist weapon soon. Will people who roll their own be viewed with suspicion?
Which takes me back to a trip to Adelaide last year with my family. Coming back I put my laptop in the checked in baggage (inside a suitcase), probably not a good idea. I carry it on these days. Before boarding an announcement came on that they had to change a wheel or something. This is Adelaide and you can see the plane right outside the windows and I didn't see any wheel changing going on.
To cut a long story short when I tried to boot up mandrake at home in Melbourne that laptop was flat as a 20 year old leaky dry cell. No way would it show any lights without a power supply.
Now the airlines tell you not to run your laptop while landing and taking off. Did this laptop run for three hours in the terminal + plane + terminal + my place because some security guy didn't know how to shut down linux?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Well its ok as long as your white and not trailer trash.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I suppose this is part of the project that has been going on for quite a while.
That project of course is the "Dumbing Down of America" -project that started with politics and social sciences, then went on to encompass history, then geography and now I guess science is next.
Makes sense I suppose.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
...are we teaching our kids to be afraid of science?
:-)
You could be teaching your children to be afraid of sex.
(I'm sorry... I'm from europe...
Chemistry supports terrorism.
You're not a chemist are you?
May the Maths Be with you!
Very slick in fact. Attack a country with low-tech means, and let the country overregulate itself, destroy its civil liberties, and generally make itself a bigger nuisance to its own citizens -- and its economy -- than what unsophisticated, guerilla-style terrorist groups could hope to achieve.
The war on (some) drugs is also responsible for making chemistry a difficult hobby to persue. Many common chemicals are hard to get now days, red phosphorus for instance. In some states buying glassware requires a permit and jumping through other hoops (Texas is one such state I've read about.)
I remember from reading biographies of of Thomas Edison and being amazed at the chemical lab he had as a teenager; it would be almost impossible for a kid now to learn and investigate chemistry like Edison did.
What a sorry state of affairs this is for the inquisitive.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
if they get their way they would gladly turn the USA in to a primitave backwards nation run by religious/superstitious whackos that are no better than the Taliban...
to quote another's sig i read in here: "If God hates the same people you do then maybe you made God in your image"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
And yes, I did make a small amount of guncotton in the 6th form. I can still remember going around deaf all afternoon...our chemistry master preferred nitrogen tri-iodide, because the smoke is purple.
Pining for the fjords
"I don't think that being proficient in computer sciences will raise any government eyebrows unless you're doing something truly illegal."
With the paranoia about evil hackers, and encryption having been already used as "proof of criminal intent" to convict someone, you never know how long that'll last.
And witch hunts for computer geeks have already happened, e.g., in the wake of Columbine and the like. Suddenly every introverted nerd in some schools, or god forbid self-confessed computer gamer, was dragged before the principal or in some cases before the police. I knew someone from the USA who allegedly had major problems getting hired in his home town, and thus had to move, because that stigma never quite went away. Once he had been labelled as probably the next guy who'll shoot the school up, that small town never let go of that notion.
And let's not forget that witch hunts usually target the unpopular members of the community, rather than the real witches/terrorists/etc. I'd wager that out of the about 2 million victims of the inquisition, at least a million were burned just because they were the unsocial ones that didn't fit the group. Or worse yet, told some community leader to fuck off.
Nerds can make really unpopular neighbours. They're the ones who'd rather sit at a computer and do god knows what nefarious things than take part in the community gossip games. Even if not nefarious, at least they're "addicts" or whatever veiled insult.
So if you think the next witch hunt can't target IT nerds, think again.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Afterall, it was chemicals that created the public outrage over Waco and Ruby Ridge. Over 100 civilians were massacred at Waco. The mainstream media, acting as the official propaganda wing of the state, didn't bother to tell anyone what federal law enforcement knew: david koresh walked into town 4 days a week to go to Wal-Mart. These incidents happened because the very agencies that want to restrict your right to make a science experiment decided to "make an example" out of people with "cowboy mentalities."
To put it quite nicely, your government decided to pick a fight with armed people that might get a lot of people killed. The next time you see some politician calling for more state power, remember that. They want to make you more vulnerable to police brutality.
Most of these tragedies and outrages could be prevented if...
1) The federal government stuck to its enumerated powers, none of which include the legal power to regulate fireworks and the chemicals that go into them except in terms of interstate **sales**.
2) Cops were required to do intelligence gathering before doing a raid. Funny how our "foot soldiers in the war on crime" can't be bothered to do the dirty work before doing the "fun stuff" like aim assault rifles at middle aged scientists and 80 year old couples accused of running meth labs.
3) Cops couldn't carry any weapon that couldn't be owned without a permit by any citizen not serving prison time. There's an ugly correlation between gun control and police disrespect for everyone from poor blacks to middle class white people...
Don't worry about that. We're still the best damn middle-managers in the Western Hemisphere! I mean, excluding of course the Germans, and the Swiss, and those folks in Scandinavian countries, and...Ok...well, basically all of Europe. Ah crap, so we're screwed afterall. We don't even live up to our own rightful mediocrity.
"Sure, the innovative will try to work around these types of limitations, but are we teaching our kids to be afraid of science?"
No, it's the home-schooling of creationism and its ilk that leave students afraid of the ungodly lies of science.
You talk as if those are two different things.
This will be a great new age. We will call it... the... ummm... Terrorism dark ages!
Shit...
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Yes, because the US Goverment wants sheep, and lots of them.
Wired editors short on Hash Oil, looking for outside help.
WE are being taught that EVERYONE must be not only afraid of science but also scientific types and scientists.
Buying chemicals and using them at home? Have a digital logic analyzer and gear to make electronic assemblies at home? Have a small machine shop in your garage? Like to build things? Are you smarter than the average american? Dont drive a SUV?
All these things are indicators of TERRORISM!
Even in the world of astronomy things are going very poorly. People buying things for grinding their own Primary mirrors are getting asked strange questions as if we are trying to build an orbital death ray for Al-Quidea.
But then for decades americans have uplifted the jock and pounded down the scientist. So this final step towards Scientide and scien-phobias was a very easy one to take. Back in the 80's the hispanic and Black cultures took a downturn and started to ridicule their smart as "acting white" and it has damaged their culture and society drastically ever cince. A nice leftover from the damed mential disease that has infected americans for nearly 50 years, the "smart is not cool" virus that encourages kids to be a D average and aspire to ask "you want fries with that" as their career choice.
Americans = stupid morons.
Want proof? look at our president! WE voted TWICE for the moron.
According to Einstein, after Physics, everything else is just stamp collecting.
Task Mangler
I have a suggestion for all of you who stay up at night worrying about what "we" are teaching "our" kids: have your own kids and teach them what you want, and leave everybody else alone. You can prepare your kids to outpace everybody else in the next generation, and then they will be tomorrow's leaders.
This whole "it takes a village" crap is getting old. My kids are going to have chemistry sets and electrical sets and all sorts of stuff. We're not going to sit around and hope the state decides to give them what they need in the schools. I would never leave my children's education subject to a majority vote of the populace, and I can't think of anything more foolhardy.
Plus, this avoids all the problems of one size fits all. Even if there aren't people "scared of science" out there voting on what your kids should be taught, even if we're all agreed that science is important, there's still plenty to disagree on: shall we teach one year of chemistry at the high school level and two years of physics, or two years of chemistry and one year of physics? What if your school just doesn't offer the exact program you need? Are you going to sit around and subject your kids to a substandard education just on principle?
What really bugs me is people who insist that they, personally, do not want to have kids, but still want to be part of all of society talking about how "we" teach "our" kids. No, these kids aren't yours. If you want some of your own, have some. If you can't have some, adopt. If you acknowledge that you don't want kids, that's great; just stay out of it for the rest of us. But my real point is that there shouldn't be an "all of society" talk on the "one right way" to raise our kids. That completely defeats survival of the fittest and the ability to innovate.
I used to like model rocketry. Now I don't bother with it anymore because I'm afraid of the sort of attention I'll draw going to a park and shooting rockets into the air.
Stories like this confirm I'm right to be worried.
When Sputnik was launched, all kinds of science became (momentarily) popular and many of us used chemistry sets, which then had most or all of the chemicals sold by United. Modest care was plenty for us, is plenty now. I suggest that others go buy a few of their chemicals (ever use copper sulphate to filter out red laser light to get second harmonic light? Works!) and deposit some money for their legal defense fund. I did.
Yes, you don't use this stuff for making food, but learning about it is fun and a good thing for people to know...especially kids who are faced, remember, with order of magnitude 10 years study before they can get to current work in ANY area of math or hard science. Things like these chemistry demos help kindle and keep enthusiasm over a rather long dry spell. Besides, the habits of bureaucrats acting as our nannies is or ought to be offensive to competent adults.
It was probably the early '80's or so when I think chemistry sets were at their peak of popularity. I used to get up on Saturday morning, grab my bike, and go yard-sale hunting looking for chemistry sets. In my mind, I figured no one set would give you enough stuff to do anything dangerous, but if I were clever enough to get multiple sets from multiple companies, then maybe I could actually find a good chemical combination that would be more interesting than turning blue looking water to green looking water. On a good day, I could come home with 2 or 3 nearly-complete sets.
Sadly, I was never able to find a combination that was truly worthy. About the worst I was able to do was to give the bathtub a purple stain that no amount of scrubbing was going to get rid of (and believe me... Mom had me try).
It is kind of sad to think that my son will probably never do anything similar (of course if he does, I'll smile and my wife will be making him scrub the tub).
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
This is rediculous. When I was a kid mixing sugar and potassium chloride, the last thing I gave a shit about was if it was legal or not to do so. In fact, most of my scientific explorations (blue boxing, hacking, amature explosives manufacturing) were decidedly not legal either in practice or end use. That was exactly what attracted me to them.
What is this attraction to appealing to fear, uncertainty, and doubt among slashdot submissions lately? The world is not going to burn or freeze due to global warming, George W Bush doesn't give a shit about your personal phone calls, terrorists aren't hiding behind the counter at every 7/11, and the Internet is not being taken over by corporations. Get a grip people.
You can never go wrong buying your child a crystal-radio set. It's a great way for him or her to learn about crystal radios.
If one of your children is killed playing with a chemistry set, make a game of it by challenging your surviving children to reanimate him or her.
It's amazing how much kids can learn about chemistry the old-fashioned way. As soon as you get home from work, demand that they mix you an Old-Fashioned.
Regarding other toys..
To determine a toy's safety, try these simple tests:
Does your child choke on it? Does it produce welts, cuts, or bruises? Does it turn up whole or in fragments in your child's stool?
Decide what you would like your child to be, then only buy toys that steer him or her in that direction.
If it is Finnish, sold at an upscale toy boutique, and three times as expensive as a comparable toy made by an American company, it is safe and educational.
Often, the best toys are the simplest. For example, sewing cards, through which a piece of yarn is laced, enhances a child's motor skills and teaches the fundamentals of sewing. Yeah, sewing cards are a whole fucking lot of fun.
Visit your local mall for such upscale toy stores as Wooden Toys Your Kids Will Hate and Professor Faggot Q. Boredom's Lame-U-Cational Cocksuckery.
One of the best educational toys you can buy your child is a pet. A rabbit, for example, can teach him or her about the life cycle, mammalian reproduction, toxicology, comparative anatomy, and cooking.
When toy shopping, look for the Joe Mantegna Seal Of Safety. It's your only guarantee that the toy has been deemed safe by Joe Mantegna.
Rounded edges on toys should be sharpened in case your child tries to chop vegetables with them.
After your child unwraps his or her new toy, throw it on the ground and stomp on it. If any small pieces break off, the toy is too dangerous for young children.
Erector sets are a great way to get your pre-teen started on making juvenile sex puns.
Buy your child expensive, collectible toys and forbid him or her to take them out of the box. This will teach your child valuable life lessons about longing, deprivation, and resentment.
Attention seeker: Bob Lazar Wikipedia article.
are we teaching our kids to be afraid of science?"
Yes, but that's not all. My (significant other) is a school teacher. Now MY (significant other) is teaching kids about foreign cultures. The other night I walked in on my (significant other) making passports. Now they are only for k-3rd grade so they are pretty cheesy and no one could possibly mistake them for real ones but still, the first thing I thought about was the video game/terrorist recruitment confusion.
Even now, I am having to write this in such a way that the government will understand that this is just a class project for the very young so they don't get their panties in a bunch when they read this through their now legal spybots.
IT'S JUST A SIMPLE CRAFT PROJECT FOR KINDERGARTNERS TO LEARN ABOUT OTHER COUNTRIES PRINTED ON 8.5X11 AND AN OLD INKJET!
In my opinion, if no harm is done then it should be Okay. People should be assumed innocent until proven guilty, and assumed to be responsible until observed or proven otherwise.
The people that say, "you can't have dangerous chemical because you might not handle them safely" might very well next say, "You can't climb mountains because you might fall off", and "you can't play football because you might blow out your knee"
We should assume that adult citizens can protect themselves and let them be responsible for their own actions. Give people freedom to do things. And also come down on people with the full force of the law of they show that they haven't been responsible enough.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
I guess it should be changed to:
Sufficiently backward education makes technology indistinguishable from magic?
Isn't that the same Bob Lazar who claimed to have worked in Area 51 giving little green men anal probes and reverse engineering flying saucers until the men in black stole his past and tried to make him disappear??
I live in Europe. It is not a (big) problem that the US is increasingly adopting a luddite stance, even going to the point of teaching creationism in place of evolution.
The smart people will move here. The rest can stay where they are. Since the ones left in the US will almost certainly not be able to make enough money to fend for themselves, I guess we will have to toss some money over the wall once in a while to keep them alive - anything else wouldn't be humane.
Eh, wait a moment.
If they follow the dark path of science, then eventually their minds will become poisoned with darwinism and other heretical ideas. And when they deny Creationism they will go to hell when they die! So BE AFRAID.
Most of your perceptions about the government are derived from eagerations of the press and entertainment cops TV shows. This also appies to 90% of the parents in the US who won't lets their kids play outdoots because of all the psychos and wackos waiting behind the hedges to abduct and molest their stupid kids. Wake up folks. Life has inherent risks and you need to learn to manage those risks.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
The well-meaning "If we can save just one child!" is the squishy soft underbelly of a police state.
I actually met a chemistry teacher in the 80s who sprinkled the lab floor with explosive crystals so they would pop underfoot the first day of class -- and had a kid go home and fatally blow himself up making his own batch. Placing personal responsibility isn't entirely clear when dealing with kids. But it isn't like nobody has died in high school sports either, is it? Maybe the formula is something like the greater good of society weighed against the occasional loss of the _foolishly_ adventurous?
Most of my high school friends who were smart enough to persue science degrees never followed the directions on those things anyways. They just combined stuff together to see what happened. They did that with other chemicals, too, not just the ones in the kit.
If people are interested in science, they'll try their own crazy stuff their own way. What should *really* be sold are safety kits... flame suits, face shields... I mean, who here hasn't made a flame thrower with an aerosol can, or a potato gun w/PVC pipe, or tried to make some homemade napalm from some rumor-recipe that didn't work?
We did all kinds of microwave tricks in the dorm microwave in college 5 years ago... it wasn't terrorism, but we did make a stable plasmoid.
And actually, just yesterday, my college friend asked me for copies of the microwave videos and any other pranks/explosions. (They were mostly harmless) The reason is that his wife is pregnant, and he wants to make sure his kid is brought up right.
After all, you don't want to blow the door off your *own* microwave...
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Home Alchemy An Endangered Hobby in U.S.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
"I'm sorry sir but this is the third time you've managed to star on "Cops", place your testicles on the ground and back up slowly with your hands in the air."
If you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to...
Oh wait nevermind.
ah yes, but where are you going to get them from??? and just how few experiments will you be able to do when you finally get hold of them??? the contents of "chemistry" sets have been seriously neutered to avoid liability claims
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Richard Florida wrote "The Rise of the Creative Class" in which he proved pretty conclusively that a city's economy depends on its ability to attract certain creative people. People value creativity and will try to live in places where they can express their creativity. The down side is that many/most people would rather be a hair dresser (creative) rather than a plumber (non-creative) in spite of the fact that plumbers make seriously good money. We also seem to have the idea that creative people shouldn't have to work hard. In this light, it is little surprise that we are having difficulty attracting science and engineering students.
It gets worse. Florida's latest book "The Flight of the Creative Class" points out that the creative geniuses we need are actually leaving the country. The country is becoming more and more repressive and paranoid. Many people who can do so would rather live in Toronto or Aukland than in New York. These include some of the very best scientists and engineers. That's real trouble. We have ceded our manufacturing industry to China. The only thing we have left is our ability to innovate better than anyone else. If we lose that we are truly burnt toast.
I dropped out of a successful 15 year chemistry career because of bad managers who do not know chemistry. As mentioned before it is a management culture now.
These same power happy law enforcement assholes who like to point guns at people who know more that they do becasue they fear them and feel they must be in a position of power by threatening violence sanctioned by the government - are the same people who refuse to believe that global warning is a real threat that is directly related to human activity. They shit on Kyoto, without knowing that it is sadly out of date and nowhere near the measures required to save us.
It is a lost cause, give up the fight. Worship Paris Hilton and the almighty pussy and throw money at it and live in frivolity until the world is dead.
Fuck it, it's not worth caring anymore. Knowledge is dead, ignorance is king. Humanity desperately needs the deadly enema that nature is about to deliver to the festering colon of humanity.
If you read this article, and said to yourself- well that's all great, but who the hell cares about chemisty? what a bunch of nerds; I'm happy with hacking away on my harmless computer... Think again. Software is next. Don't think so, eh?
It's easy for me to imagine a day when knowing how to access hardware directly (OMG! I wrote a driver) could be seen as subversive. Or using a compiler that can do more than a few 1,000 lines of code may be useful for making fancy apps that can do things that people might not be able to wrap their minds around. Actually, it's probably not safe to give people technical documentation at all- we don't want people to be able to write software that could maybe, potentially do something bad or not understandable by someone with an 80 IQ.
It realls seems as if you're not happy just waking up, driving to Wal*Mart for work and being yet another consumer of crap that the government is going to make some laws to prevent you from actually understanding and exploring the world we live in. God forbid we find something other than buying a box fan for $8.99 that may actually be intellectually satisfying.
From TFA: "the Justice Department argued that terrorists could deploy model rockets to shoot down commercial airliners" Yeah, I'm going to use my science fair project to shoot down a 747-400 at 30,000 feet. Give me a break. Reminds me of the Attorney General telling us that downloading music was funding terrorist activities. http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/ 24/0358210 [slashdot.org] Is there anything I can do now that doesn't contribute to terrorism?
Next thing you know they'll arrest you at the supermarket for having chlorine and milk in the same shopping cart.
Supporting safety has parallels to supporting IT security. The arguments in favor of both have very graphic and tragic examples to use. Who wants a kid to loose a finger or eye? Who is in favor of risking that critical business information gets into competitors' hands?
The dangers of too much "safety" or "security" are much more subtle.
When I was a teen, being into chemistry had a certain amount of coolness specifically because there was a chance of explosion. It was only a junior chemist's knowlege and skill that kept him in one piece -- at least that was the perception we were happy to reinforce.
Now everyone knows that what you get in a chemistry set these days are variations on colored water. The cool kids who take risks are still out there to look up to. But they're not the kids that are doing "science stuff". They are the ones jumping between building roofs on skate boards.
A friend of mine worked in a university chemistry lab supporting a bunch of PhD candidates and post docs. One day the head of the department walked in just as someone in the back of the room dropped a container with an..."oh shit....oh SHIT!". The department head turned on his heel and left. When my friend later asked the head if he needed anything and asked why he left he said simply..."There was double Oh Shit". As it turns out the grad student had dropped a jar of highly carcinogenic material with a boiling point of 72 degrees F. He was carrying it from a refrigerator to the hood.
The moral of the story is there is nasty stuff out there and it needs to be well managed. I would not want my neighbor dumping nasty byproducts of his hobby into his septic system that would leech into my groundwater.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Long before fear of terrorism took hold, fear of lawsuits caused home science kits to be 'dumbed down'. I'm surprised that 'chemistry sets' are still sold. In my youth, I had a chemistry set that today would prompt the authorities to send in hazmat teams* from all the neighboring states. Oh well, I suppose you can always simulate chemistry experiments on a PC, sigh ...
* - a local middle school was recently locked down till a hazmat team arrived. Someone had broken a mercury thermometer outside the school. I kid you not!
[Insert pithy quote here]
...i have a nice batch of meth cooking in my basement!
Bob Lazar. You'll see him on every Area 51 conspiracy show. He also has a nice (funny) little presentation on the UFO "sports" model he claims is kept at Area 51. He's the boy who cried wolf, what's the point in believing anything he says?
In the last year, I have done a few very fun "mad scientist" things with my siblings (no kids yet). At least once per month I try to come up with something that they won't get at school, or elsewhere. Anything to try and teach them to not fear science.
We play with dry ice a lot. The kids are young (all around 7), so our projects are often very simple. Just having a pail of water with a few pieces of dry ice in the bottom bubbling up was enough to scare most of the neighbors and adult family members. They think I am endangering everyones lives. Luckily my elementary teacher wife explains to them all that everything is fine (in terms most of them can understand)
Last week we played with borax and elmers glue. It makes for some fun textures. They are a bit young to fully grasp some concepts of what is happening on a molecular level, but I think they do get the general idea (I like Lego analogies).
Now that summer is here, we can probably do some fun stuff outside. Maybe blow up some pop bottles with dry ice. Hopefully I don't end up in guantanamo considering it is now classified as a terrorist weapon. Lucky for me, my stay at guantanamo can be endless and without a trial! Wahoo....life in prison for playing with liquid c02!!!!
Anyone have any other simple, cheap, and education little home ideas (for my crew targetted at age 7-10, though anything would be nice)?
Check out this this interesting link, which -- as usual -- I found while looking for something else.
As an aside, you can get most of the ingredients you need for making simple explosives from sources beneath the authorities' radar. Even sulphuric and nitric acids can be obtained by reacting sulphates and nitrates with hydrochloric acid. And if you don't know where to get that, I'm not going to tell you.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Yes, it's true that everyone is paranoid. Some of it may be due to fear of being accused of terrorist activities. Another thing to remember is that some of the chemicals in the old chemistry sets were toxic - such as mercury. You can still teach chemistry and science without going the gunpowder route. My daughter participated in her school science fair. We did a two-colored flower experiment splitting the stem of a carnation and putting it into two glasses with blue and red water. Another carnation was used as a control. It taught my daughter about capillary action, we made some cool two-colored carnations, and she won honorable mention at the science fair. So I guess it's really what you are trying to teach.
--Cally
Or, it could all be one vast conspiracy, and the S-4 aliens won't want us to be able to fight back with home-made anti-saucer rockets.
no
Great article about a young experimenter who creates a nuclear reactor at home.
Not at 30,000 feet, but during takeoff or landing.
That doesn't make the claim any less ridiculous, though. Why resort to something as unreliable as a model rocket when you could use an actual weapon (SAM, machinegun, take your pick) instead ?
In this same vein, I came across a torrent for a great book just a few days ago (perhaps on Boing Boing): 1960's "The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments" -- which is a phenomenal read. It's just what it sounds like: a children's chemistry text book. But it tells you how to do all the basic science that freaks out the government. It's an interesting slice of the era, too. It's all "yea, pesticides" and the nuclear future. It is, apparently, the book that inspired that kid in California to try to build his own breeder nuclear reactor.
Form the post and other people's comments you would think that the White's were just playing with a store bought chemistry set... Hardly! What they were doing, albeit not neccessarily wrong, goes above recreational chemistry. They were selling chemicals and all sorts of other crap, apparently illegally, since they were ultimately charged with "shipping restricted chemicals across state lines".
Bottom line: They should have known better, they were operating a hap-hazard lab and supply store without even knowing what rules and regulations were and got busted. Plain and simple. They should have known something like this was going to happen, especially given our itchy trigger finger g-men out there!
Let's not forget about OSHA. If any of you have had to deal with the fear of an OSHA inspection at your workplace, you'll know what I mean. I can only imagine that schools are in fear of documenting everything they have as well, and it's much easier to clean out the chemistry lab than to acquire an MSDS for table salt.
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
I view this with great alarm.
One of the things that has bothered me for a long time is that educators and policy-makers don't seem to understand the crucial educational role of unstructured, unsupervised, childrens' activity, from, say, about age 7 to 14.
Teachers think they're doing the teaching, when really they're building on a foundation that the child has laid on his- or her-own. You have to develop the readiness yourself Only when you're interested in something and have tried to figure it out for yourself and failed, are you ready to absorb "the answer."
This applies to all fields, of course. Athletics coaches can't do much for a kid who didn't spend hundreds and hundreds of hours in the backyard tenaciously pitching a baseball over and over and over and over and over again.
But it's particularly true in the sciences.
A lot of the stuff kids do is dangerous and would be frowned on if adults really knew what they were doing. When I crushed vacuum tubes in bench vises, I could have cut myself on the broken glass or got something in my eye. God only knows what that sticky goop was--sort of combined the properties of Vaseline and rubber cement--that was inside some potted telephone transformers my buddy and I opened. We used to throw it at each other because it was so darned hard to get off.
Even the stuff that is not dangerous, at the exploratory stage seems so non-educational and misguided that no supervising adult would be let a kid pursue it. I read the explanations of how a transistor worked in "Popular Electronics." From everything I read, it seemed to me that, well, a transistor was just two diodes back-to-back, right? And, well, a battery was basically like a diode, right? (Wrong, of course, but at a certain age it seems plausible. I mean it made current flow in one direction, right?) Like an alchemist or a perpetual-motion inventor, I spent literally weeks tinkering with 1.5-volt batteries connected plus-to-plus with 9-volt transistor radio batteries, adding resistors and so forth, and trying to get my lashups to amplify. I was certain that I was on the brink of a new discovery and that I was about to get it to work any day now. I even had a name for it. I was going to be the inventor that gave the world the "Chemistor."
I probably learned more NOT getting my "Chemistor" to work than I did building Heathkits which did work.
A few months ago NPR was doing a restrospective of "Fresh Air" interviews, and Terry Gross was interviewing Grandmaster Flash, the rap artist. Holy cow! He was a nerdy basement tinkerer just like me... sort of. He would prowl the alleys for thrown-out radios and audio gear, and spent a lot of time building his own audio consoles that had the features he needed for what he was doing.
I often thing the most underrated social injustice is the different self-educational opportunities available to kids who live in a house with a basement versus kids that live in an apartment.
Biology? I never really "got" biology. Why? Because I was doing my basement tinkering with batteries and wires.
My wife, well, one day when she was a kid, her mother comes into the kitchen. There is a dead chicken on the kitchen table. There is a bottle of preserving fluid. My wife is using a pair of tweezers and is picking lice off the chicken and dropping them in the bottle. My wife's mother says, "Oh, dear. Sweetie, couldn't you manage to be interested in butterflies instead?"
My wife, she "gets" biology.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Let me guess: you are a younger chemist trained within the past decade?
I started exploring my interest in chemistry at home, with home chemistry kits (which are lame nowadays by comparison) and then with ordinary household chemicals that can do interesting things. Even after having a Ph.D. for several years, I explored the shelves at home for interesting experiments. Is these things crimes in your opinion?
Newsflash: those caustic or otherwise dangerous chemicals are ALREADY in most homes. What's wrong with experimentation, assuming SOME level of proper guidance?
Finally, I will add that I have noticed that many chemistry programs, college level now, have surplanted the teaching of proper techniques in the name of "safety." I wrote a report for a private college a few years ago in which I stated:
"If our chemists are not trained in the proper handling of hazardous materials, who in our society will be?"
I've seen the trend toward no toxics in Gen Chem Lab, and it bugs me. There's also a similar trend in Organic Lab, of all places. Now, I used to work in a lab that handled experimental (read: untested, no MSDS, etc) pesticides and we had to KNOW what were doing. I've also worked with many substances that HAD an MSDS that said "no known data." I learned that knowledge in my college chemistry courses, because we handled rough stuff even then.
There are several factors driving these trends. One, schools may fear liability if a student gets hurt or sick handling something dangerous. Two, disposal costs; there's big business in the disposal of anything labeled 'hazardous.' Three, pressures from gov't groups, like Fire Marshalls or BATF, etc, on 'proper' storage and handling equipment (which is bunk in many cases). I've seen departments allocate excessive time and funds to the maintenance of safety procedures that were not really needed for the quantities on hand just to fulfill some bureaucratic policy, in a sense becoming bureaucratic themselves.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
Small amounts of chemicals should be available for science experiments. The regulations should control how much you can buy. Even if someone could make illegal fireworks with the stuff, if you limit just how much they could purchase at a time you would keep them from
going into mass production of the stuff. If someone can make a few M80's and blow his hand off, well that's HIS problem but at least he won't be able to produce a few gross of them and destroy the neighborhood.
I see everything in the comments ranging from "Americans are just getting too stupid" to (classic for /.) "it's teh Debbil George Bush and the demon Rove making this happen".
.... ahem ... pyrotechnic experiments were done by my friends and I with no adults around. Usually we flew our planes and rockets in a nearby meadow, while spending hours and hours unsupervised, roaming the neighborhood in summer. Having heard just this morning on the local news of a 13 year old boy being abducted and tortured for 7 hours by 2 men (and knowing our seive-like judicial system) - who's going to leave their kids unsupervised and unwatched for hours anymore?)
Sure, lately it's wrapped in a 'fear of terrorism' cloak, but is this anything but the logically extrapolated point of where we've BEEN going for the last 50 years?
Ever LOOK at a current chemistry set for say a young high-schooler? THEY SUCK. It's got these impenetrably child-proof capped chemical bottles, micro-amounts of anything, and very little in there more dangerous than sodium chloride.
No, while I understand the propensity of shallow people (ala Wired) to turn this into a subject with which they can make conveniently trendy political attacks on an unpopular administration, the fact is that we've been turning into a litigiously-driven culture of fear for decades.
(Tangentially but not irrelevant to the discussion is the world of our children. I don't know about you, but most of my model rocketry and early
You want people to go into the sciences? Fine: somehow make it so that if a stupid kid jabs himself with a pipette in the eye, he somehow doesn't get to sue the pipette manufacturer. Make it so that if Jenny wants to build a model rocket or airplane, she can fly it without fear of a multi-bajillion dollar suit if the rocket breaks cranky Mrs. Finster's bay window.
Sometimes to learn, you have to have the freedom to experiment. Sometimes, the experiments can be mildly dangerous. In a society whose lawyers have designed it so that they can wring maximum financial gain, er, "justice" from every little risk, does it surprise ANYONE that this is having a stultifying effect on the sciences in the US?
-Styopa
If some terrorists want to made a bomb they will not be stop by this kind of policies.
But, now, United-statians are going to grow as low educated people.
So terrorists know how, United-statians don't !
Who the fool !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I don't think that this is a bad thing. Chemists do have special training to handle many chemicals. Places like United Nuclear are both dangerous and irresponsible -- they sell sodium, mercury, radioactive materials and so on.
:
The alternatives to doing chemistry at home are
- university chemistry classes. If you would like to try different experiments, talk to the TA and course instructor -- most of them like chemistry too
- do a science fair project. I did this in high school, and I worked with a professor in his lab. This was great experience, and he watched over my shoulder at all times.
- befriend a chemist (most are quite friendly!). They have access to the proper equipment, hoods, showers, *disposal* and so on. Plus it will give them the much needed opportunity to socialize.
That's what it comes down to. If you're supposed to have some chemical, some copany is already doing it by the ton. Making it yourself is most likely more costy than simply buying it.
Now, there's also the "illegal" part. Namely explosives and drugs. So yes, the government has a definite interest in keeping its people dumb, or at least educate them only in a fashion suitable for the government. Pol Pot forgot that last part. It's been refined now. Someone who does not know how to create a problem is no problem.
You see the same development in IT. Fewer and fewer people know how to program (I mean program. NOT writing code! I mean knowing how the things work, not knowing how to write a few lines of code and rely on the magic of the compiler). Thus fewer and fewer people are able to actually make things work in a "non intended" way.
We're being reduced to being consumers. You get what you should have. Not what you want.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I was told that in the 60' and 70' home chemistry was the rage in USA
Poor Mr. Wizard probably gets spit on by kids calling him a terrorist. Is he even alive anymore? Probably killed by US military.
Can I bum a sig?
The sad part is not the fact the Gov't is doing this to us. The sad part is the average American does not care about where our gov't is heading. It will only get worse until they realize the Gov't is going too far in their zeal to stamp out drugs/terrorism/whatever. Hopefully it won't be too late.
Management skills are worthless with nothing to manage. We no longer create very much wealth (which comes from the factory floor and programmer's cube).
With little wealth being created by the lower classes, there is little wealth for the upper classes to aggregate.
Meanwhile, the IOU to China gets bigger by the hour. I feel sorry for my yet-to-be-conceived grandchildren, as if this country doesn't get some leadership that isn't owned by the (mostly foreign owned) multinational corporations we're going to be in a world of trouble.
Unlikely though, because a great number of Slashdoters are as shallow as Wired and will take this opportunity to suppress opinions that run counter to the prevailing leftist opinions.
It's a shame the perfectly valid opinions such as those in the parent post are effectively censored by leftist moderators.
"Northants Ch Insp Peter Glover said the message is that carrying knives is never acceptable in any circumstances ... "Simply carrying a knife in a public place is a crime. If you are stopped and searched by police, you could be arrested and could end up with a criminal record."" - Knife warning as amnesty launched.
They'll have to pry my vegetable peeler and picnic cutlery away from my cold dead hands.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I took one look at the insides and realized that if I was lucky, I'd have to throw it away. Very annoying too because I'm quite used to the sound through my little amp.
A multipurpose tool is being restricted for its potential use in illegal activities? Now where have I heard that before...?
Oh right, every slashdot article ever.
Bittorrent is not evil.
Chemistry sets are not evil.
Guns are not evil.
Network analyzers are not evil.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Most kids today have been raised to expect most "things" to give them instant gratification. If something is perceived as too hard, most just can't be bothered to learn it. Math, physics, chemistry and most other natural sciences *ARE* perceived as "too hard" by most people, including kids. So most conclude - why bother?
Where did this come from? Too many channels on the TV to zap between, giving most people the attention span of a ferret? Too much dumbed down content that keep children passively entertained, so they don't bother their parents? Too much emphasis on shortsighted gains by their parents (kids imitate their parents, good and bad stuff)? Too little emphasis on MASTERING and too much emphasis on BROWSING (no, not necessarily the Internet kind)? Uninspired/insufficient teaching all the way through the education system? Basketball players make $3M/year, scientists at most $100K/year, making basketball players the natural role-models in a spending-crazy society/economy?
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Yes, I made gunpowder. Went to the local drug store as a nine year old and got the stuff. Not sure if the pharmacist even knew what I was up to... Also threw calcium carbide in a paint can of water and set off. Boom! Played with benzene, mercury, and God knows what else. Gilbert chemistry set had a lot of interesting stuff in it. BUT - this was probably not a good thing, and I certainly wouldn't want kids doing this nowadays, given what I know about safety and missing body parts. HOWEVER - all is not lost. It is very possible to do things with "kitchen chemistry" type experiments. Inks (water soluble) can be chromatographed on paper towels. Lipstick (sic) can be chromatographed (components separated) on napkins... (There is an interesting story in Primo Levi's The Periodic Table about this.) So the bottom line is that clever highschool teacher science wannabes have to learn how to make the excitement of science clear to students by using a little ingenuity and thought about safer way to do this than in the good/bad old days.
My friend and I went in on some chemicals to make some fireworks (potassium perchlorate and various fine dark aluminum powders, various things for color, some cardboard tubes and plastic cylinders, wicks etc..). After the second year of buying the chemicals, he received a letter in the mail with a US Justice Department letterhead reminding him that using those combinations of chemicals to make explosives is a federal offense. No tin foil hats here, big brother IS and was watching.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Mr. Underbridge certainly has a valid point
I would say that Mr. Underbridge is quite correct in stating that some of the chemicals mentioned in the article are genuinely dangerous (e.g. powdered Aluminium, Potassium perchlorate), and should not be used or stocked in homes. Especially in quantities larger than you can fit in a teaspoon. But so is a pound of gunpowder, so is drain cleaner, so is a gallon of gasoline, and so are firearms.
But it's not the whole story I would say
However I would submit that the amount of and concentration of the chemicals used is (in most cases) much more relevant than the type of chemical. Certainly where it concerns strong oxidizers (perchlorate, nitrate) and chemicals with a high energy content that are easily oxidised (e.g. metallic aluminium), strong acids (undiluted sulphuric acid, concentrated nitric acid, etc.).
The importance of quantity and concentration
What I really miss from the discussion is a sense of proportion ... or quantity. Chemistry is after all a quantitative science. For example: 100 ml of a properly diluted solution of sulphuric acid (say a 10% dilution) can't cause serious problems (where a gallon of drain cleaner can), and neither can, say, 1 tablespoon full (say 3 grams) of potassium perchlorate. With "serious problems" I mean problems for someone other than the experimenter. And as to fume hoods ... how much fumes can you create when you work with small amounts of chemicals? In my childhood experiments I did have to run out of the room a few times, coughing, and I did inhale some HCL gas and chlorine gas ... but due to the fact that I was using small amounts of chemicals (never more than half a teaspoon) that never was a serious problem, and it most certainly didn't have a negative influence on my health. If anything ... it taught me respect for chemicals.
As long as you wear goggles to prevent anything from getting into your eyes (this is something you can teach in schools), and you have a quick and safe getaway planned ... I feel that amateur scientists should be ok with diluted and/or small amounts of chemicals. Even caustic ones. Even without proper training, and without formal safety procedures.
Shouldn't people be educated to recognise what's really dangerous?
And as to glassware (erlenmeyers coming with mandatory registration) I would agree with the article that it's way over the top. To quote from the article: ""A lot of retailers are scared to carry a real chemistry set now because of liability concerns," McGuire explains. "The stuff under your kitchen sink is far more dangerous than the things in our kits, but put the word chemistry on something and people become terrified.""
Summary and conclusion
I feel that you can be too cautious, and that caution should never spill over into hysteria, especially uneducated hysteria. The whole atmosphere strongly reminds me of how witchcraft was portrayed in the Middle Ages. People didn't know, didn't have a perspective, but just knew that they were terrified.
Personally I feel that making chemicals available from apothecaries in gram amounts for amateur science (with sales only to adults, registration identical to medicine registration, and an automatic waiver of responsability for the dispensing chemist or kit manufacturer) is a good option and safe enough. You won't be able to make suitable explosives for terrorist attacks with gram amounts of chemicals sold in chemistry kits, but you can with a truckload of fertiliser.
And serious
Yet another step by our wonderful government. Not too sure how far back all this goes (anyone out there feel free to help me out), but if I wanted to buy 2 boxes of sudafed for a family with sinus problems than I should be able to without being scruitinized (I know this is an extremely bad example, it's just to make a point), but instead of having law enforcement do its job to make sure there are no meth labs, lets just limit everyone good intentions or not from buying it. Now we have something being limited with an even greater reason to be a free market. I don't think I'm too old, but who remembers having those cheap home chemistry sets we got for christmas? Dangerous? Of course it is, isn't that the job of parents, teachers, and our government to help us from blowing ourselves up? Rather than teach safety, lets keep people from it. Is this a government? Or is it a baby-sitting service. My two cents and I'm glad to still be able to hand it out.
"brix_zx2, What is your sole purpose in this forum!?!?!"
"To do whatever you tell me MODERATOR!!!!"
The Science of Chemistry includes the power to transform base materials into substances suitable to your purpose, whether that purpose is meth production, explosives production, or something 'legitimate', such as self-education or any of ten thousand beneficial things.
It's no surprise that the government wants to restrict the power to do 'bad' things. The problem is that the government's method is to restrict the power to do things -- all things. If these methods succeed, the consequence will be boring. That is, nothing will change.
Power to the people!
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Reminds me of my youth!
I think throwing around the terms like 'terrorist' and 'drug lab' are the only way to foist these 'laws' on the population. Every generation starting in about the 60's has had similar buz-words.
The bottom-line problem in America is that we have become a nation that attempts to legislate stupidity (we aren't alone). Next time you read or hear about the enforcement of a law, ask yourself, "what stupid behavior is this law attempting to prevent stupid people from doing to themselves?" We routinely ban behaviors because 1-2% of the people that do it are injured. The stupid are protected and the rest of us are denied legitimate fun, learning, and teaching opportunities.
Now is the time to create organ banks and empty the prisons by convicting everybody to be disassembled (not no 5 though) and places into organ banks. No wait - somebody has already come up with that idea - shute now I am in violation of the DCMA.
If I dont understand it - then it should be unlawful and perpetrators should be shot, tried and found guilty in that order.
>I suspect that if you wanted to kill somebody with uranium
A russian businessman was killed in Moscow by the mafia for years ago. They hid two kilos of isotopes in his office chair. Months of radiation sickness is not a pleasant way to die. Also, a dozen mexicans were killed after poor stole abandoned canister of passive medical ray-source and cracked the armor open in public. Nobody knew glowing blue powder is lethal and it was not discovered for weeks, until a contaminated truck drove to Los Alamos lab with unrelated cargo. Radioactivity is invisible and quite lethal.
Amendment2 does not grant US people weapons of mass destructions, only "arms", which by its very wording means a targeted extension of the bare hand's destructive power (sword, rifle).
>>Many common chemicals are hard to get now days
Hard does not mean impossible. If you are acquiring mass quantities, then it might be a problem. However, just because something requires a background check and/or a permit does not mean that "the man" is coming down on you.
Many common chemicals are dangerous. A chemical compound should be treated like a firearm. They can maim, disfigure, and kill if used improperly.
>>it would be almost impossible for a kid now to learn and investigate chemistry like Edison did
You can, however simulate just about any reaction in a common chemistry set.
http://modelscience.com/
Edison lived in a different time and place. Racism was rampant, sexism was just as bad, and those who spoke out against the local church were often tarred and feathered.
We've lost a lot of good stuff too. TE could have grown and smoked pot. He could have bough morphine over the counter. He could have lived his entire life without ever worrying about identity theft.
Shit changes. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes for the worse.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Happened to crypto in the 90s and communism in the 60s.
:-)
Face it, americans just don't like thinkers.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
If you want to preserve your ability to purchase chemicals (whether for pyro or some other use) without a federal explosives manufacturing license, please consider a donation to this organization.
Isn't Bob Lazar the guy who claimed to work at Area 51 with UFOs?
An off-topic flamebait troll gets rated "5, Insightful?"
What The Fuck???? The religious right (who I loathe, as they're neither religious nor right) have absofuckingly nothing whatever with this. Nothing at all.
God (who few in the "religious" right actually believe in, as the "religious right" is a political group) has nothing to do with this, either.
The parent post is completely off-topic and offensive, and the moderators are obviously as bigoted. Sad that any religion-bashing, no matter how uninsightful, unenlightening, off-topic, or offensive is highly modded here. When are you children going to grow up?
Doesn't the guy's name, Bob Lazar, ring a bell with anyone here?
Here's a clue stick for you: Area 51. Too funny - I'll bet there were sightings of black helicopters, too!
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
I also stained a sink with potassium permanganate. The stain takes some years to come out but does eventually fade. Makes a helluva lot of color for only a SMALL crystal of the stuff. Much fun (tho be darn sure not to drink it!!!!)
The Fireworks Foundation (http://www.fireworksfoundation.org/) the Pyrotechnics Guild International (http://www.pgi.org/) are fighting this overstep by the CPSC. I am a proud card-carrying member of the PGI and in this case the CPSC is overstepping its bounds in several ways. If they succeed in winning against chemical suppliers, the entire fireworks hobby is endangered. The legal fireworks hobby is an amazing phenomenon that is completely legal with annoying but manageable federal permits.
If you care about this issue, visit the fireworks foundation and donate to the defense of fireworks chemical suppliers for the hobbiest.
...it was not the "religious right" than started the push to making amateur hobbiest chemistry illegal in Texas back in the mid 1980's, it was a liberal democrat one-term Governor named Mark White who nobody remembers any more.
idiot douchebags
And they steal. Don't check anything remotely valuable. My GF chains were in the bag at check in (hidden away deep in the bag) and not there on arrival. Ironically one had a cross on it.
The only realistic way they could have found them is xray machine
Like we'll ever see one penny from that.
Sad sad sad... And its not like they leave a note "inspected by #..." which they should have to.
"We are not just a recall agency," explains CPSC spokesperson Scott Wolfson. "We have turned our attention to the chemical components used in the manu-facture of illegal fireworks, which can cause amputations and death." A 2004 study by the agency found that 2 percent of fireworks-related injuries that year were caused by homemade or altered fireworks; the majority involved the mishandling of commercial firecrackers, bottle rockets, and sparklers. Nonetheless, Wolfson says, "we've fostered a very close relationship with the Justice Department and we're out there on the Internet looking to see who is promoting these core chemicals. Fireworks is one area where we're putting people in prison." - Fireworks is just ONE area where they are putting people in prison.
-What are you in prison for?
-I shot a bunch of people, with good behaviour will be out in 20years, you?
-Made some fireworks, deemed a terrorist, life.
You can't handle the truth.
We emphasize management and we see what floats to the top. Now we've got a bunch of folks selected for their "soft skills" -- which is essentially the ability to manipulate people -- and we've put them power. Not just managing companies, but the country as a whole. Think you're safe because your "hard skill" hasn't been linked to terrorism and drugs yet?
I am not a crackpot.
Could you give a few more details? What was the teachers name, what shool and the localtion of the school? Also, do you know any details of the explosion?
What a freak!
Bob Lazar is a UFO freak who is just looking for more attention to back up his claims that the government is keeping his "past" quiet... Sigh... Wired should do more homework and remind people that he's a nutter. But I guess that opinion isn't very popular.
Sigh...
I stick to walls...
Erlen-what? They don't use lab ware. They cook up meth in motel coffee makers. It's a combination of left-wing nanny state and right-wing paranoia that's really killing us here.
... because one of the two guys is going to be in permanent solitary confinement.
But the American politicians are and should be taken to task by the citizens. It's quite obvious that the people running the show here in the U.S. don't want uppity and informed citizens. Those sorts of citizens are a lot harder to control than the happy, fat, passive TV and Internet addled variety. So it stands to reason that they want to separate people from the tools for gathering knowledge:
1. Make science the enemy. Whether it's the enemy of being a good God fearing fundamentalist Christian (therefore making science the enemy of God), or a tool for terrorists (therefore making science an enemy of the American people) the general goal is to scare people away from science. Or at the very least discredit science as being a valid tool for knowledge.
2. Make it impossible for the average person to have the tools to get a message out to a large group of people. Although there are some valid business points in trying to break the Internet into a 'have' and 'have nots' style network (AKA opposition to net neutrality) the end result is that it will be a lot harder for someone to blow the lid off of a cover-up online in the future. Expect to see the Internet become more and more like TV and less and less like a large public sign board. They will feed you what they want you to see and hear. You will have few and very weak options to make others see and hear what you want them to.
3. Keep the public misinformed about everything. We see this happening with nearly all news outlets in the U.S. and where science is concerned this is becoming especially true. Fox News is, of course, the major culprit in preventing people from knowing what is really happening in the world. They ignore important stories, or provide complete diversions from reality in reporting if possible. If they can't ignore the reality then they make the occurrences into huge emotional plays to hook viewers in (think Geraldo during the Katrina Crisis in New Orleans) and garner more support for being compassionate and caring. In truth, the real news reported properly is boring stuff and will lose viewer. So misinforming the average American is a cakewalk.
Science is being turned into another religious battle. The wealthy and the powerful WANT and NEED science so that their businesses can continue to put out more new "stuff" to keep the people beneath them entertained and complacent while earning them more and more money and power. So they don't really hate science at all. They just want the people beneath them to be afraid of it or hate it. Very much like the church used to operate regarding books before the printing press. A tool like the printing press is dangerous to maintaining that kind of control over the underlings. Thus science (and one of it's many results: the Internet) is making a lot of different printing presses and needs to be stopped...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I still remember hauling a new US Robotics modem in my luggage when I was in college. Can't say I remember why, but there you go, I'm hauling a modem through the airport. Now those modems back then weren't the kind of funky plastic boxes you get nowadays. This particular one was a sleek black steel box with LEDs and a switch.
Let's just say that not only I got pulled to the side and asked to explain what that thing is. Then I hauled by the police to some machine that, as far as I can guess, was a sorta giant vaccuum cleaner supposed to "smell" explosives. Scared me silly first, because the way it was mounted and the way it sounded, it looked uncannily like one of those vertical drills. I thought they were going to drill a hole in my new modem.
And if by now you're just about ready to start lamenting the US ignorance and post-9/11 terrorism paranoia... this was Germany, several years before 9/11.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's almost funny, reading this article and the comments today. Here in the UK, the media are making a big thing about knife crime just now, after a couple of high-profile stabbings. The comments in the forums on places like BBC News are full of people saying we should raise jail sentences for carrying/using/killing with a knife (what, again?) and other similar knee-jerk reactions. Those suggesting looking at why we have such a problem (and indeed whether we really do or it's just media hype) make up a small minority of those posting comments, as do those suggesting that there may be a better answer and proposing a response other than much harsher penalties for those caught in posession of or using a knife.
I see clear parallels there with the discussions about home chemistry, and for that matter with discussions about writing computer programs for various purposes often mentioned in these parts.
It's sad. We used to tell kids about being responsible, teaching them that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, and disciplining those who abused their freedoms at others' expense. Then we'd know that most people would grow up to be responsible adults, and focus on those that weren't. These days, it's more about telling people they can't do something in the first place, and imposing draconian penalties if they even think about trying.
We never used to deny people opportunities to learn about things and enjoy them for their own sake, just because they had some small potential for abuse. I remember being inspired at around the age of 14 by a public presentation at a local university, explaining how fireworks were made. I went along with my dad - a scientist himself by trade - and he found it interesting as well. I went on to study chemistry for several years.
But today, that sort of thing is probably frowned upon. I drive a car that can go very fast, so obviously I'm a dangerous driver and need five speed cameras to check up on me on the way to work. (And yet friends who ride with me often describe me as one of the safest drivers they know, and I've never been so much as pulled over by a police car in over a decade of driving.) I've spent much of my life studying various martial arts, and lost count of how many ways I know to seriously injure or kill someone, so perhaps I should go register myself as a lethal weapon. (And yet the last involvement I had with a mugging was giving first aid to the victim afterwards - something I'm also trained to do.) Post-Dunblane, a friend of mine who used to shoot for sport had to give up his Olympic-style pistols and his hobby. (And yet, he never fired a gun outside a supervised range in his life, while gun crime in general has gone up since the ban.) You get the idea.
What happened to everyone having freedoms and taking personal responsibility for exercising them in an ethical way? I'm not sure whether it's big brother, the nanny state, or some bastard child of both, but whatever it is, I liked society better the old way.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Remember BOB LAZAR? He produced a video about how he worked in Area 51 & explained the UFO's propulsion system, powered by antimatter? They've put on their black suits and are pointing their M16s at him! AGAIN! Maybe they're really looking for his tolen samples of element 115!
But the guy is a real physicist. $95 for a decent geiger counter may soon seem like a real bargain.
As a highschool student, Chemistry was taught horribly. The teacher didn't even make an attempt to motivate anyone. It was entirely book work, with the exception of one simple lab. (producing precipitates in some microwell containers) Not that we had a very good class to do fun things with. Everyone was more interested in their Myspace comments than Hydrogen or probability maps. I suppose I should point out that I was the only person, without breasts, (the teacher showed obvious sexism towards the prettier girls) to have an 'A' in the class. (I got a 100%) I'm really interested in Science in general. Next year I'm going to be a senior in High School and I'm praying Physics shows better results than Chemistry did. I'm also lucky enough to be taking a college Chemistry class through the school, hopefully I'll get a better instructor.
That my folks bought me to encourage my interest in science. It came with about 50 small containers of chemicals (like spice jars), a couple dozen test tubes, assorted pH strips, and a booklet with instructions on performing some basic experiments. I had a lot of fun cooking up different concoctions, making terrible smells (my mom eventually banished its use to the garage), and so forth.
A few years later, digging through some older stuff in the garage, I came across the kit. I wanted to replenish some of the chemicals, but it turned out that the company that made the kit had gone out of business as some kid had managed to do something spectacularly destructive and sued the company out of existence.
There are probably numerous reasons that chemistry kits are no longer readily available. One is probably that there are fewer folks interested in science. My guess is that with our entertainment culture, kids don't need to be as inquisitive about the world around them, since they're getting most of their information on TV. Liability is another important reason. Another is likely that a lot of kids with an interest in science (rational explanations for how things work) now get into computers.
Fear of being charged with terrorism is just a convenient excuse for a much more troubling trend in society.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
YEAH HIM! No doubt a freak, but a real physicist freak, and those are the best kind! Wired should have pointed out that they (the gov't) might be looking for their stolen samples of element 115, the next best thing to UWTB.
...only outlaws will do chemistry at home.
That, or it's a plan for Art Bell to get Bob Lazar and the ever-intelligent and Angstrom award holder Richard C. Hoagland to come up with some hypergeometry and Mr. Wizard kit to build a flying saucer to solve the mystery behind why Bigfoot is covering up the paranormal research.
I stick to walls...
If bigfoot had that Mr Wizard kit, maybe bigfoot could stick to walls, too. What's the secret?
A number of people I know today made things that blew up in high school. Today they are engineers and teachers and scientists. Fortunately they have all their fingers. Making things that blow up was the thing to do in the 50s and 60s (yes, I'm that old) and I can't imagine the desire to do that has changed that dramatically. But my friends weren't terrorists (unless you were the school principal) and the idea was to make pitcher's mounds become pitcher's craters, and slammed locker doors become permanently open. Safe? Nope. Jail worthy. Nope again. Used to be called hijinks. Now it is haj jinks. Shame really. Too much paranoia.
My brain is overly lubricated
Oooh, how exciting! Virtual experiments! No fuss! No mess! No stinky results! Everything fun already programmed out for your safety!
No thanks.
I guess I was lucky. I got a chemistry set when you could still get stuff that was kinda dangerous. It was my favorite present and I used it until the interesting chemicals ran out. The end products of my experimentation were mostly nasty chemical stains and noxious odors rather than expected (explosive) results, but I learned a bit about chemistry and had a whole lot of fun.
Sticking to walls is no problem - claws, shag carpets - you get the picture.
I just don't see Bigfoot building a lot of high-tech without serious amounts of shaving and NEET. Clean rooms are hard enough with we shaved apes, but something as furry as...
But yeah, Bob's one for the books. As for being a physicist, he's no more a physicist than any of us who live in the physical world. Oh well...
I stick to walls...
If kids aren't afraid of science yet, that's the only fear our fanatically-risk-averse culture hasn't taught them.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
From the article: "the Justice Department argued that terrorists could deploy model rockets to shoot down commercial airliners"
So let me see if I understand this correctly: It's really important that you can get guns and ammunition easily, but model rockets could be used as a weapon, so they shouldn't be allowed. But if they were officially a weapon, then it would be okay.
(Shakes head in bewilderment)
How is organized religion related to this issue? It's just an aside, but... big-time organized religion is often (not always... often) a natural enemy of science and knowledge. A population kept in the dark will be more likely to buy its various ideas (which are frequently unscientific).
For some history, check out Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."
As for being a physicist, he's no more a physicist than any of us who live in the physical world
who sell an allegedly decent geiger counter
even totally fake degrees from MIT are still genuine fakes
This doesn't surprise me at all. You can file chemistry sets along with model rockets and marksmanship as things that used to make being a kid cool but are no longer "acceptable normal behavior". We're reduced to parking the kids in front of the American Idol. I'm off to buy my own island country where I don't have to be politcally correct. Who's with me?
Seems you can't do chemistry anymore. We were the target of "profiling" and had a large team of machine (and other) gun toting guys come and bash the place up. After all, I have money (I run a successful consulting firm from here), am skinny and wired (genetics) and have a chemistry lashup -- must be making Meth, right? Luckily they made so many mistakes that the little weed they did find here was sort of forgotten about -- only cost me a few grand in legal fees to make them see how stupid they'd look on TV, which is evidently where they "learned" their trade. www.coultersmithing.com I'll have the story up there later on. We've become friends with our new masters...DHS has lots of money and sometimes needs consulting help. We ARE on the same side of the street most times. Even BATFE didn't mind our experiments with small amounts of HE once they found out we were OK -- we had the opposite of the Ruby Ridge experience with them. When DEA didn't find the meth lab they expected, we ASKED for the BATFE to make sure we were not doing anything they'd be worried about, and indeed they came a couple of days later for a pleasant chat. It was DEA with the jackboots. The whole time the local cops were shaking their heads -- small town and they knew us already as good guys.
To be fair, you can still buy dry ice (and usually not get carded) at grocery stores around here, and you can still by pure lye online, but the latter just irritates me. I hate leaving a paper trail for any of my purchases, and leaving one for a "watched" substance bugs the shit out of me. I'm surpirsed goddamned gasoline doesn't require a permit to purchase!
Better living through obfuscation. Project White Noise
Hey, I know my freaks - heck, I used to eat lunch with Mark McCutcheon at Newbridge back in 1994. He's such a freak, that he's even been banned from reference on Wikipedia! He used to buy the $5.00 lunch which included the special of the day and a can of Coke. Then we'd shoot the shit about ideas... I just never thought he'd write about them...
Anyway, I still think that anything Bob Lazar says has to be re-examined a few times...
I stick to walls...
When I was 10, I used to play with electronics a lot more, and I sometimes would take my bike over to Radio Shack. At that time, they had walls upon walls of electronic components, ICs, batteries, kits; basically anything that you'd need to build anything. Those things that you couldn't get could always be easily ordered.
They also had a whole section of books and booklets on simple circuit design (iirc, written by the Forrest Mims III mentioned in TFA). They'd even show you how to build stuff that would be considered dangerous and scary today - a 2kv photoflash power supply somehow sticks in my mind. Also, a book on how to build your own simple computer from scratch (I'm not kidding).
Fast forward to 2006, where I have a computer business. I went to R.S. to get parts to build a simple network polarity tester the other day. All of the electronic parts were in one cabinet safely out of the way. "Wrapping wire"? What's that? I had to explain, and someone finally came out from a back room with a roll in 80s packaging about 1/2 hour later.
Prominently displayed now are toys and gadgets - the cell phones, laptops, clocks and trinkets. But what good will those be to a country of consumers that only buys them from China and doesn't know what actually makes them work?!
Incidently, the same thing is happening at auto parts stores. I fix my own car and motorcycle. Recently, the actual parts sections at Straus' have been halved in size to make room for more rice-boy-toys (flashy seat covers, cheap neon crap, &c)
-b.
By doing that they would have put fewer people at risk and reduced the threat of resistance from Mr. Koresh even if he traveled with a few friends. A few dozen agents suddenly surrounding a group of walking people reduces reactions from the people being arrested.
Storming into someones home trying to serve a warrant will do nothing but stir up resentment and resistance. This should be avoided unless you're some woman trying to show the world what a big pair you have.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
I suppose what I find so fascinating about BL, is that only the smartest people I know of are able to be fooled or offended by him. The rest of the sheeple are necessarily wihtout an opinion. I think Edward Teller might have counted himself within that number.
Don't try chemistry at home. Don't browse for or shop for chemical supplies online. Don't shop for chemicals in stores. Don't talk to people about chemicals. Don't buy books about chemicals, for they are watching libraries.
Don't write online about the government. Don't blog about the policies. Don't browse politics on the web. Don't say mean things about the President, or godforbid wish he was dead, for that violates the divine person of his majesty and the crown itself, and you will go away.
Don't browse for immoral pictures, for those logs will be used against you in divorce court and job interviews. Don't even bother running for office when the GOP has access to logs of you visiting "hot russians for you!"
If you work for the government, do not inform the press that your boss is breaking the law, or is involved in a massive secret conspiracy to break the law, for the Supreme Court has ruled that there is no first amendment if you work for someone, or the King has declared that the Constitution does not apply in his Forever War.
If you are a reporter, do not critize the government, or you will not be allowed to ask questions in person. You will have your phone logs carefully monitored. So do not listen to people telling you that they have information that the government is breaking the law, for you will go to prison as a traitor to the crown. Your source will be arrested, for they are watching him too. And he will go to prison.
There are no rules in Bush's self-declared World War III, so you have no rights to a trial, speedy or otherwise, and you burn in a cage in Cuba, if the Crown so decrees. No one will be told what happened to you. If they insist on petitioning to redress their grievances, they will be denied permits to protest. If they protest anyway, they will be restricted to First Amendment Zones complete with portable fences and multiple cameras with recording gear, after first surrendering their ID cards to the masked armored soldiers.
Don't research dirty bombs, which, even tho the CIA declared the devices worthless, you as an American citizen will be declared an enemy combatant. the AG will declare you guilty and hold you for years, then mysteriously drop all the charges after a judge laughs the evidence out of court. They'll charge you with something; after all, they have complete records on what you've said and browsed for years. There's always a crime if they watch you long enough.
If you are in a militia, they won't care even if a member blows up a federal building. Free pass for the patriots.
Don't talk. Don't criticize. Don't look. This is World War Three, as Bush said three weeks ago, and the war will never end by definition as long as Evil is in the world.
Each and every thing I've said is happening now. Each and every thing I've noted has never happened in US history before now.
19 idiots with boxcutters, and now we're the Soviet Union at its worst. Grow a set of balls, you cowards. They've made you so afraid of the unnamed and unknowable brown enemy that you've given up everything that made life worth living. And it won't save you from any attacks, so why the fuck are you all letting them get away with this?
In both IE7b and FF 1.5.0.3, that page comes up with no content, just the header, sidebar, etc.
Censorship!!!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is best done outdoors. Procure a two-liter bottle of soda and roll of the Freshmakers.
0 00109/
Step-by-step directions (plus videos of the results) here:
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00
Here's the correct one: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/000 00109
The article mentions another blow to home experimentation after the 1993 WTC bombings, where chemicals became even more scarce to non-professionals, yet Ramzi Yousef, the perpetrator, had at least some undergrad in electrical engineering according to answers.com...what would 'non-professional' restrictions have done there? My science of choice is mathematics and statistics, so the most dangerous tools for me are Mathcad, Excel, and oh, no...a mechanical pencil, but I would like my children to be able to become inquisitive chemists or physicists if they want to.
Also the same people who have blocked construction of new nuclear power plants consistently over the past 25 years - so the US is still mostly using reactors designed in the 50s/60s that are considerably less safe than what we can make today.
Life in a free society entails some dangers. But let's think about this: let's say that 12 people a year are killed by amateur chemistry set explosions and make the headlines, causing people to clamor for the banning of chemistry sets. Does anyone think about the 120 people per year saved by a new antibiotic developed by someone who started out playing with a chemistry set as a child? The consequences of actions aren't always simple and obvious, and the sooner people realize that, the better.
Cheers, -b.
from TFA "National security issues and laws aimed at thwarting the production of crystal meth are threatening to put an end to home laboratories."
come, what you really need is ephidrene or pseudeoephedrene to make meth. These things are hard to make by the average joe, so making pseudofed and related drugs perscription only, you would really make a dent in the meth business -- but this would hurt big business, namely large pharmeceutical companies, and the goverment would never stand in the way of big business making a huge profit, even if the product is ruining a large portion of our population. But they are all the poor people so no one cares. What the hell is wrong with this country.
>Let your imagination go wild and you're still probably not too far from the truth where it comes to their psychological disposition.
Are those the people behind TSA abuses like this one?
A friend of mine said she had trouble buying chemicals for a home lab back in the 70s. She was completely qualified to handle them but the vendors feared she owuld hurt herself and sue them.
The more cruel reality is that the uneducated are never just content to admit that they don't know something.
E.g., ID/creationism are a direct result of people not understanding evolution. E.g., forget the dot-com bubble: every day around you, people are scammed and whipped up into frenzies by politicians or lobby groups because they have no clue about real economics. Read some day about keynesian economics and you'll see that some things that politicians condemn or promise during every single election, and never actually fix thereafter, just can't be fixed. Those are just the way the economy works. Yet the vast majority of voters are manipulated by the same falsehoods again and again and again.
Or look around you on Slashdot, and see the plethora of falsehoods passing for economic "theories", based by some over-simplification or on idealizing some failed economic system (and I don't just mean communism, but also unrestricted 19'th century style capitalism, which _did_ fail by causing the great depression), by people who just don't have even the faintest clue what they're talking about.
That's problem 1: People who can't understand actual science, _will_ find refuge in some fairy tale instead. And hold that for absolute truth instead.
The same goes for "soft sciences", too, btw. Those who don't understand other cultures or nations, for example, are the first to weave horrible fairy tales about them.
And problem 2: There'll always be a snake oil vendor ready to sell them some convenient fairy tale. And some times the price to pay is being dragged into some war or other catastrophic course of action. Or just to build a nice road towards dictatorship on those fairy tales. So growing whole generations of ignorants can bite us all in the ass sooner than we think.
And maybe the most important, problem 3: if you think they don't affect those doing actual science, you're sorely mistaken. There seems to be an increasingly vehement offensive of the ignorant and the stupid against any kind of science. The media already presents any kind of science as nothing but a bunch of controversies where your guess is as good as that of those bickering beardies in lab coats, and any Jane Doe's or Jack Conartist's home-brewn "theory" is just as good as that of a real scientist. In fact, for most publications, that kind of disparraging attitude is the official one and disguised as "impartiality": as long as they have two conflicting points of view (no matter how ridiculous one or both may be), it's scientific enough.
We're growing whole generations who believe with all their hearts that "science" is just some club of beardies in lab-coats taking wild guesses, and some academic structure on top of it just enforcing an arbitrary dogma. E.g., just busy trying to suppress all those miracle cures and miracle detergents and miracle audiophile power cables, just to protect their arbitrary dogma. And that any Tom, Dick and Harry can take just as good (or even better) a guess about anything, from chemistry, to evolution, to global warming, to nuclear power, to medicine, to astrophysics, to anthropology, to god knows what else.
Think they're harmless? A lot of them will be the next politician that decides the next school budget, or R&D subsidy, or the ones who vote for that politician. Or the manager that decides a company's R&D budget. Or the journalist wipping equally ignorant people into a frenzy pro or against some research they don't even understand.
I'd start worrying now and avoid the rush later.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Great article. I've been saying this now for half a decade. There is a major brain drain going on in the United States. The government trying to "encourage" kids to learn science and technology will do nothing. The reason that the 11 to 13 year old kids don't want anything to do with science or engineering is that they are not stupid. They can look around and see that their society does not value scientists or engineers. They know that scientists and engineers have low paying jobs and that those jobs are now being outsourced to India and China. Why would anyone want to spend a decade or more training for a career in a dead-end field.
As an engineer, I would not let my children enter science, mathematics, or software. Although I love this fields myself, I know that my children would not be able to support their families if they chose careers in IT, science, or many engineering fields. It's better to do something that has to be done on site like a mechanic or real estate agent rather than something that can be outsourced like research and development.
America has already lost this battle. The people who are outsourcing the high-tech jobs and thus causing the brain drain will be rich and retired by the time America's economy is ranked 20th in the world. Then they will simply retired to some tropical island while our grandkids live like Indians did in the early 20th century. Ironic, eh?
It aint dead thier just too stoned on the new compounds they found they can make to report or shared it with anyone.
damn, where'd I leave that syringe.....
However, when my own children were growing up in the 80s and 90s, things had begun to change quite radically.
Now, with my grandchildren living with us, my wife and I have an ongoing argument about their play activities.
She just doesn't want our five and seven year old grandsons to go outside at all without supervision. They must stay in the front yard, aren't allowed to even go down the street to play with other kids their age.
So they stay inside mostly and watch a lot of TV--and eat.
I continually hound her about leaving them alone, letting them go out and PLAY, but "it's too dangerous out there" is her refrain.
Of course, it probably IS more dangerous--but the chances of their coming to harm from sexual predators or what-have-you are still infinitessimal. Yet they ARE coming to deliberate harm from their sedentary lifestyle!
In good part, I blame the 24-hour news cycle promulgated by Ted Turner et al. With so much time to fill up, you get to hear ad nauseum about this or that serial killer, or child rapist, or whatever. This leads to a grossly distorted view of what's going on in the world, and it makes everyone AFRAID.
Personally, I'm surprised that anyone still BUYS chemistry sets for their kids. After all, didn't we see a story on CNN the other day about some kid burning himself?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
>We never used to deny people opportunities to learn about things and enjoy them for their own sake, just because they had some small potential for abuse.
Sex. At least in the US.
Maybe you said something bad about the government. Maybe you also have chemicals that could be used to make bombs in your house. All of a sudden, things are not looking so good. Essentially what you are saying, whether you know it or not, is that to be an amateur chemist you have to give up your right to piss off the government. Is this still and extreme case? Probably. More than likely, most amateur chemists who criticize the government won't have their lives ruined. Is that good enough? No. Will this have a chilling effect both on amateur chemsitry and free speach? Yes, and that is why it is bad.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Cyanide salts were everywhere when I was a kid. Rat poison (usually Potassium Cyanide) for example.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Could this statement be any more obfuscated?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There was this guy named Bob Lazar that's frequently on UFO conspiracy shows that said he also once worked at Los Alamos and then was at Area 51 working on UFO propulsion. Is that the same guy? I'd guess the age is about the same. The reporters looking into the UFO Bob Lazar had trouble verifying he ever worked at Los Alamos at a high level.
The lawyers at the CPSC tell us that by stopping sales of some chemicals, they believe they will stop the illicit "M-80" trade. We in the pyrotechnics hobby disagree.
For those that don't know: There is a "booming" business in making and selling illegal salutes. Sales of large (greater than 50 mg) salutes (the proper name for a noisemaking device which functions by the deflagration or detonation of flash powder) to the general public has been illegal since 1966. BATFE is the organization that sees to that enforcement. CPSC is not charged with that duty; they see mainly to products that are intended to be sold to consumers. However, the Federal Hazardous Substance Act grants them authority to regulate hazardous substances in certain limited situations. The CPSC is attempting to stretch their FHSA authority to cover the chemicals used in the manufacture of salutes. Currently, this is mostly finely divided metals (aluminum, magnesium, and "magnalium"; Al-Mg alloys) and potassium perchlorate, but there are other oxidizers that occur in some flash formulae.
CPSC has a persuasive powerpoint deck that shows lots of nasty injuries from illegal explosives. None of us, least of all the pyro hobbyists, want to have people lose fingers, hands, eyes, or lives over some pyro; we agree on that. However, we in the pyro community believe that hobbyist suppliers of pyro chemcicals aren't the source of the chems used in illicit trade; those come from traditional chemical supply houses, mostly.
Firefox Enterprises is currently in litigation with the CPSC over this. Go to their website http://www.firefox-fx.com/ and click on the CPSC link for details. Skylighter, my local supplier http://www.skylighter.com/ has been visited by the CPSC, but so far he (Harry Gilliam, proprietor) hasn't been enjoined to stop sales. He has very tightly restricted sales of salute-making chemicals however; so maybe that will hold the dogs at bay for the moment.
In the US, it is legal, at the federal level, to make your own fireworks without a license. State and local laws may indeed restrict you, but the feds (BATFE) allow it. We in the hobbyist pyro community would like to see that continue. Help us. Join the fireworks alliance, at no cost. http://www.fireworksalliance.org/ Read the information that Dave, Tom, and John put together there, and agitate your legislators. Buy something from one of the vendors above; there is a surcharge that goes to the CPSC defense fund. Donate directly to the fireworks foundation: http://www.fireworksfoundation.org/.
To help out and enjoy some great fireworks at club-sponsored events, Join the Pyrotechnics Guild International: http://www.pgi.org/membership.aspx. Join a local (or distant; some of our members are states away) pyro club: http://www.pgi.org/fireworks-clubs.aspx My club is The Crackerjacks http://www.crackerjacks.org/; but join any you like. We'd be happy to teach you how to safely construct individual fireworks, how to choreograph a disply, or just how to make your backyard fuse-lighting a better experience.
Novapyro
Next time, I'd post anonymously and say "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" or "hand puppet" or "donkey."
Way harder for them to figure out. Unless you are actually involved with a puppet or donkey who teaches kindergarten by counterfeiting passports, in which case I'm sorry for blowing your cover.
Man, you really need that seminar!
More of the Same old Ninny Mindedness from our favorite Nanny state government.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Just molten styrofoam in gasoline. A lot like napalm, but still...
Man, you really need that seminar!
Radio shack only sells cellphones now.
How are people supposed to learn how to build the calculators they are so dependant on.
Has anyone read the foundation series...
It really feels like we're working toward something like that end.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
Dry ice can be used to make CO2 bombs, which are illegal.
I'm not sure why they're illegal, as they'd be damn near impossible to use as a weapon. They're basically just really loud noisemakers.
Hell, there's a video floating around of some guys kicking one around a warehouse trying to get it to go off, then one of them picks it up and it explodes in his hand. Result? Some cuts, a bit of bleeding, no damage beyond the hand that had been holding it. No biggie. And he was holding the damn thing. Didn't look like it'd done much more damage than a large-ish firecracker held on an open palm might have.
I can see arresting people if they're setting them off in malls or dumpsters or something, but I'm sure that that's already illegal without the specific law against this type of "explosive".
That's chemistry. Stupid, toxic, explosive chemistry but chemistry none the less.
Is that a SCSI connector or are you just glad to see me?
Think about the ramifications of how it will decimate the science curriculum in the expanding home schooling universe!
Fair point, but I think age restrictions are something of a special case.
Children are not adults, and cannot reasonably be expected to make appropriate decisions for themselves (however you choose to define "appropriate"). Thus I don't have a problem with treating them differently where there's a clear benefit to doing so.
Where you draw the line is always going to be something of a grey area, of course, but I doubt many of us would argue that 5-year-olds should really have the vote, or 12-year-olds should really be allowed to drive on public roads.
If anything, I think a lot of today's problems stem from treating children too much like adults. Here in the UK, school teachers have had their powers to discipline poorly behaved children severely curtailed over recent years, and now the government is meddling with average parenting as well. (I'm not just talking abuse, which of course we have to deal with - a legitimate case of "think of the children".) The result is a load of young, irresponsible people who have no self-discipline or respect for authority, and consequently who misbehave to the detriment of others, because they know that they'll probably get away with it.
True story: I've had a kid who was trying to damage a neighbour's car tell me that "You can't stop me - I'm only nine, I can't commit a crime!" Sadly, since our law does not admit any kind of guilt below the age of 10, he was right, and AIUI I couldn't have laid a finger on him even as I watched him keying the car. Fortunately, my presence appeared to scare him off on that occasion and nothing came of it. But how can it be right that children can have no legal responsibility themselves, while the adults who are supposed to have that legal responsibility are not required to actively supervise them?
Again, this comes down to responsibility: in this case, it's the recognition that a young child cannot be treated as an adult, and the assignment of responsibility for looking after them to an appropriate person. And again, the example I just gave comes down to someone not meeting their responsibilities properly. In this sort of situation, I think blanket bans on young people having certain rights and abilities are appropriate, and thus I have no problem with not selling knives/fireworks/petrol to kids.
The example you gave is a tougher one, because here in the UK the current limit is 16, and I'd rather see 15-year-olds who are going to do it anyway taught about the dangers and then left to enjoy it, rather than treated as rapists because they did something a day too soon. These things are never black-and-white, and we don't necessarily have the best shades of grey right now.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I am acquainted with a couple of people who live in rural areas and grow orchids in their basements under lights. This is actually a pretty common practice for hobbyists and professional growers, as basements provide a nice, controlled environment and they are often humid. Apparently, the police have showed up at their homes on more than one occasion because someone in town noticed their basement lights are on nearly 24 hours a day and that they have a huge number of plants down there. Apparently, growing high quality blooming plants to exhibit at shows sponsored by your local garden club is now a suspicious activity, while sneaking around in the bushes and peeping into your neighbor's windows at night is okay.
If you grow orchids from seeds, you need to have a laboratory setup because the seeds are microscopic and difficult to propagate. You need stuff like an autoclave to sterilize your tools and agar as a growing medium. Sales of some of the tools you need, like flasks in which to start the seedlings, are being restricted now according to the article. I know other people, myself included, who grow orchids in semi-hydroponic media. All perfectly innocent and harmless uses of these materials. I worry that thanks to people who grow other, less innocent plants using these methods, gardening and having houseplants are soon going to be considered criminal activities.
my wife had a cold a few weeks ago and I was shocked when the checkout clerk said I had to show my drivers license to buy cold medicine (anti-meth measure, I assume). not only did I have to show it but they wrote down several pieces of information in a log book. I don't see how this is kosher w/HIPPA (yes, I realize that, like most US laws, is a joke) since it was a highschool kid at the front checkout, not a pharmacist but that's another topic.
the thing I find interesting about this at this same pharmacy we (wife/I) regularly pick up perscriptions for each other w/o any scrutiny and my aunt even picked up some vicodin for me after a minor surgery a couple months ago. so... you can walk up to the pharmacist, ask for John Doe's vicodin and that's not a problem but try to get out of there w/over the counter cold medicine and it's the Spanish inquisition.
go figure...
No kidding it is getting stupid. A while back I went into radio shack to buy parts for making a IR reciever. The Radio Shack sales guy asked "What are you making, a bomb?". So yeah, buy something that isn't a cell phone, and people will look at you like you are making a bomb to kill people. Why else would you be modivated to learn these things called chemistry or electronics, the only reasons must be you have a score to settle so you learned about this stuff to get your revenge!
So it seems, like always people are affraid of what they don't understand.
What is the answer? Educate others about chemistry and electronics or other sciences, would probably work, except people are not interested.
You need:
1 vending machine toy bubble thing... you know, the ones with 2 parts, a lid and a clear bubble, in which toys in those little quarter machines are stored. The lid and clear part must fit together very tightly, and must not have any cracks.
Some dry ice (don't need much)
Water, room temperature or slightly warm
Do this outdoors, on a flat surface (concrete works well). I've seen it done indoors, and it'd probably be OK... but just do it outside.
Put a few very small chunks of dry ice in the clear part of the container. About a cubic centemeter of it should be plenty, but try a little more if that doesn't work. The dry ice should be broken apart, not one chunk, so that it sublimates more quickly.
Add a bit of water. Don't need much, too much and there won't be much room left for the gas to fill (a bad thing), but too little and there's a small chance that it'll just freeze around the dry ice. Maybe 1/5 of the way full.
Quickly (don't want the dry ice to be gone!) secure the cap and place the bubble cap-down on the ground (I'm assuming that the cap is flat, as it has been on all of the ones that I've seen)
If done properly, after 5-15 seconds the clear bubble portion should shoot up in the air a good 12 feet.
Fairly safe, you could probably lay it on your hand and launch it from there without risk of injury beyond a bit of a sting, though I've never tried it (and probably won't).
I once opened a dud by hand, it just made a "Pop!" and came apart, the force involved is such that you can stop the bubble easily if you're holding it. It pushed my hand back and inch or two, no pain involved.
Wear safetly goggles and you're really set, as I can't think of a way to injure oneself with this if one wears googles. Maybe if you swallowed it, I guess. Then you'd choke. But that'd work without the dry ice, too.
Get several of the bubble things, as sometimes they don't have as good a lid seal as they seem to at first (unusable), and the lids will often crack during launch (hell, they sometimes crack when you're just opening them by hand to get the toys out, no surprise there)
I totally agree with you Mr. Pippin! I have a Ph.D. in physics, and know about a lot of things that could be used to hurt people in really nasty, horrible ways. Of course, I am a nice midwestern girl, so I would never, ever do anything like that.
The general public seems to dislike and distrust scientists because they think we know more than they do about certain things and are hiding the truth from them. People have been distrustful of scientists for centuries and have taken steps to control knowledge they perceived as dangerous in the past. Just look at what the church did to Galileo. I can't help thinking that it is only a matter of time before the government decides that the knowledge possessed by scientists is a security risk, and they round us all up and put us into some kind of internment camp to keep our knowledge from falling into the wrong hands. Or the government could just have all scientists implanted with microchips to monitor our every move.
The level of paranoia about terrorism and the general lack of scientific understanding by the public in the U.S. has really got me scared. When you combine all this paranoia and ignorance with the restrictions on stem cell research and the teaching of evolution demanded by some religious conservatives, the U.S. is heading straight back into the dark ages.
It aint dead, thier just too stoned on the new compounds they found they can make to report on or share it with anyone.
An endangered Hobby? We better get AHPS(the American Hobby Preservation Society) on this before the hobbies become extinct! Poor, furry hobbies.
You talk as if those are two different things.
Technically, they are. The President just has a direct line to Jesus, who tells him what to do. It's a bit like the situation with the Pope, only Protestant instead of Catholic.
Stick Men
I suppose they'll ban electronic hobbyist materials when someone uses an EMP on the NYSE. Then they'll ban personal computers when terrorists execute a cyber attack. Lego Mindstorm kits will be banned when terrorists use a giant killer robot.
Novapyro
The irony is that these efforts to become more secure, however well-intentioned, have unintended consequences that come back to bite you.
By way of historical analogy:
In the 19th century, Britain led the world in rocketry and rocketry innovations. However, non-government rocketry was largely outlawed by the British Explosives Act of 1875. A generation later, the centers for innovation in rocketry had moved to the U.S., Germany, and Russia. In Germany, Oberth and his protoge, Von Braun, both started as amateurs, before Von Braun began working for the German government.
Better ban carbonated soda an Mentos then! :)
Seriously, I recall reading in some book many years ago about a supposedly very dangerous "bomb" using dry ice. You fill up a metal vessel (pipe?) completely with water, not allowing any air, then sealing it tightly. Then you "flash" freeze it by dropping quickly covering it up with dry ice chips. The theory is that the water expands as it freezes (of course), and because it goes so fast, the metal walls of the vessel shatter violently and send shrapnel all over the place.
At best, it seems impractical (limitations of toting bulky dry ice around). At worst, seems like it wouldn't work that well to being with.
Better living through obfuscation. Project White Noise
What you're talking about is sodium ferrocyanide. It's what is called on the label of the table salt that contains it as an additive, "yellow prussiate of soda" to avoid freaking people out with the word cyanide.
It's used widely in food to prevent caking of powdered substances. It will not easily dissociate when mixed with all but quite strong and or hot acids, though it can degrade under high heat (like in a potters kiln). Given that food ingredients are often acidic (vinegar) and processed at elevated temperatures (salt in a several hundred degree fry pan), you quickly come to the idea that it's not that big of a risk, at least in fairly small quantities. You have to work fairly hard to get it to be even a small one. Much harder than you would to make a common household item like gasoline a risk (No fire needed. Just spill it over broad parts of you and not wash it off. Ouch. Or, leave a pan of it to evaporate in a small enclosed space where you are and breath the fumes.). Even chemically ignorant people are able to live with gasoline because we use it daily and mostly know the precautions we need to use.
I think you just gave a good example of what some of the people here are talking about. You're a highly trained chemist and yet, you get the amount of risk posed by the chemical wrong simply based on the name including cyanide. That's exactly the problem that DSBSCI was mentioning above. The risk is different than what you perceived it to be.
Is this a nullification of what you were saying? Of course not. Should all things be freely available just for asking (sarin, for example)? Of course not. There's merit in managing the risks. But, let's correctly understand what that level of risk is before we make the regulations.
I know all about this, I took a bunch of chemicals that are present in the human body and tried to bring my dearly departed mother back to life, What I ended up with a missing right arm, missing left leg and my brother's soul bonded to a suit of armor. I wish Alchemy books would come with a warning about such things.....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
We should all be worried, very worried. Not from terrorists, or meth labs, but the rising level of acceptable dumbness developing in this country. I see kids (and adults) today with poor math and science skills, and unable to do critical thinking and problem solving. In fact if you are you are a child or teenager, and are good at science, you are labeled as a geek or a freak, But if you were a good pitcher on your little league team, the whole town loves you, your parents love you, your teachers love you. You are already an accepted member of society. How many inner city after school science programs are there compared to sports programs? Some parents get nervous when kids show interest in science, and even actively discourage these interests. I suspect that parents are afraid of the kid actually becoming smarter than they are :)
In Texas it is illegal to own lab glassware (test tubes, flasks, etc) without a signing a paper that basically throws away your right to privacy, and allows the law to drop by any time to see what you are up to. These insane laws make it hard on us amateur scientists - a dying breed for sure. I build a 40 watt carbon dioxide laser - it was fun, not just because it can start things on fire, but because it was a challenge. A friend of mine has a 14 year old son who I showed the laser to, I though he would show real interest. (I know I would have at his age, you couldn't tear me away.) But to my surprise he just said.. "Oh that's cool." He did not ask a single question, and when I tried to explain how it worked, I lost his attention so quickly I knew I was just wasting my breath. He wanted to go and play ball with his brother. I did chemistry when I was young and enjoyed a lot. I am now setting up my own DNA lab in my home. Computers, electronics, biology - I was, and still am fascinated by it all. I can rant on this subject forever, but I hope people wake up to science and not be so fearful and paranoid, or we will be left with such a brain drain in this country we will forget how to count to 10.
Odd that the Wired article (and no /. comments so far), have commented on Bob Lazar's colourful history.
He's the dude that claimed to have reverse engineered UFO's at Area 51, and claimed to have advanced degrees from MIT and CIT (which no one can substantiate). He's on all the UFO conspiracy shows.
A colourful character for sure, and a go-getter, but anything coming form him seems that it might be taken with a grain of salt (errr, sodium chloride).
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Aside from the many other potential problems with this, it's also completely untargetted, as there's no real way to time the blast.
There are surely 100+ better ways to make a bomb with household chemicals and/or basic electronics from Radio Shack.
"Many common chemicals are dangerous. A chemical compound should be treated like a firearm. They can maim, disfigure, and kill if used improperly."
So can a knife, a car, a baseball bat, a tree branch, a wrench, or millions of other household and common objects.
Oh well. Can't get ahold of most chemicals to try neat and fun experiments.
Looks like it's back to the old Gasoline Bomb for me.
Carnage
"... Here in the UK, the media are making a big thing about knife crime just now, after a couple of high-profile stabbings...."
It's yet another manufactured moral panic:
Obligatory Wikipedia link
Much like modern fashion, the moral panic of the day (hoodies anyone?) seems to be churning faster and faster, but it doesn't disguise the unholy alliance between a hysterical populist media and a power-grabbing government.
T&K.
Political language
The same slugs who want everyone to wear a bicycle helmet, not smoke within 25 feet of a doorway, sit through an 8 hr. class to be able to legally drive a boat, and ban Legos because they have small parts that kids might *choke* on.
I see this regularly when people complain about nanny states (complaints with which I greatly sympathize), but I never quite get why smoking is grouped in here. Everything else you mention are things which can hurt only yourself unless you are clearly reckless or malicious with what you are doing (driving your boat into someone else's, stuffing Legos down a kid's throat, etc). Thus trying to regulate them is nanny-like.
But smoking is an act which, in and of itself, is affecting other people. I don't think it's strongly regulated enough - I want it outright banned in public, or even in private around children (by virtue of them being stuck in a household). I'm not talking about drug regulation - I don't care what you put in your body - but the problem is the smoke. It's a form of pollution and needs to be regulated as such.
- Warning: Off-Topic Rant About Smoking "Rights" -
I liken smoking to urination - it's not extremely and immediately harmful like going around punching people, but it's harmful if you're exposed to it in excess, and it's offensive and disgusting to anyone who hasn't just been blinded by their culture into just accepting it (and there are cultures where people just piss in their own water sources, that doesn't make it any less unhealthy and gross). People shouldn't just wander around public spaces and do it everywhere; and while I don't care if you want to do it in your living room at home (I just won't visit you), if you've got kids who are stuck with you in that environment and you continue to make it unhealthy for them like that, then you should be held accountable for that.
Think about it. You wouldn't want people walking around pissing on the sidewalk or in restaurants or a public park. You would call people who piss in their own living room or even on their front porch gross pigs and probably wouldn't want to associate with them. If they had children living with them in that environment, you'd probably report them. So why is air pollution acceptable while this liquid pollution is not? Why should people be allowed to smoke around town, in the park, or in restaurants? Why should people be allowed to force their kids (who are captives of their families) to live in such a polluted environment?
You're probably a smoker and are just defending your "right" to smoke. Well I'm not willing to put up with your disgusting habit around me. It pisses me off to no end when I ask someone - even politely - to not smoke nearby and they get all uppity about their "right" to smoke there. Your right to smoke, like all other rights, ends when it infringes on the rights of others, in this case my right to an unpolluted environment. And that goes beyond just not smoking when asked, or only smoking when and where you think no one will be around. Smoke lingers longer than your burned-out nose can tell, I can smell it on you when you walk into the room, and you never know when someone else will come around anyway. If you went for a walk and found someone on an otherwise empty street taking a piss on the sidewalk, would you excuse that even if he was "polite" enough to stop pissing when you came by? Why not? Cause there's still piss all over the sidewalk, that's why! He shouldn't have been doing that in the first place.
- End Rant -
I don't care what you do with your own body. Go find all the heroine you want and shoot up until you die for all I care. Grow pot and make THC butter and eat all the special brownies you want. Go buy some chemicals and experiment and so long as you don't blow up anybody but yourself I've got no problem with it. Ride a bike without a helmet, it's only your own life at risk. But when your habits start taking a toll on the public space, then the rest of the public has a right to tell you to stop and hold you responsible. Go boating all you want, license or not, but if you run into the dock and break something you're in trouble. Take all the drugs you want, but don't dump your wastes into my air.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Troy McClure voice, "You might remember Bob Lazar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar from such news stories as: claiming to work on UFO's at a secret government base near Area 51 called S4, asserting the stability of element 115 and its use in UFO propulsion through the mysterious force "Gravity B" (aka strong nuclear force), claiming to hold degrees from MIT and Caltech while the records indicate he was actually attending a community college in Los Angeles at that time period." Either you believe this nut, and the raid on his business was only the latest step in an ongoing government conspiracy to discredit him, or you think everything he says is a lie for additional publicity, in which case the story of his arrest could be called into question. Either way, chances are this blurb is wholly unrelated to the government restricting innocuous chemical sales, by virtue of the fact that it involves Bob Lazer
Sadly, even in this day and age, witches ARE the unpopular members of the community.
Nice recipe. For those who don't know: ethyne is the chemical formerly known as acetylene. As in oxy-acetylene, as in incredibly hot welding torches.
This stuff has more binding energy than a dominatrix on speed. Toasty.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
A chemical compound should be treated like a firearm. Which is to say, in a free country, available without government restriction. Except DHMO. DHMO is exceedingly dangerous and should be restricted. But that's the only exception.
While there certinally is a problem that is well addressed in many ways in this article. Focusing on United Nuclear and Bob Lazar is not a very good way to go about drawing attention to the situation.
/. and everyone knows how to use google so I won't bother to include and references as they're FAR too numerous to try and include a balanced selection.
The CPSC most likely does have legitimate complaints against Lazar as United Nuclear isn't the only thing he's known for. There are two things Bob Lazar is known for more widely than his "almost everything we advertise is out of stock" webstore.
The biggest thing he's probably most widely known for are his widely discredited claims of having worked at Area 51 on alien spaceships. Claims which have also raised doubts about his supposed employment at LANL. This is
But the thing that probably drew the most attention from CPSC and BATF is his involvement in amateur pyrotechnics and his annual "Desert Blast" event. Again a quick search for "Desert Blast" will yield plenty of background info.
In Lazars case not only was he providing chemicals - he also was providing information on how to create explosives and other pyrotechnics - AND providing a venue for people to use them often times in illegal ways.
This is someone who's got a long history of false or inflated claims, flaunting of laws and rules and most likely is 100% guilty of the charges he's acused of.
Portraying himself as a martyr to home chemists is just a way of trying to protect himself from his own mistakes and does more harm to the general cause than benefit.
When I was a kid, I had a chemistry set.
I'm not sure if I'm in the minority or not but all I did (well ~98%) with it was mix a bunch of random stuff together to see what happened (surprise surprise - not much).
I also had a program called ChemLab (I think) that had ~50 experiments and I worked through each one of them / got a result and gained better understanding than I ever had through a real chemistry lab or set.
Anyway, it seems to me that it'd almost be nicer to have a reasonably flexible software simulator that kids could use (assuming that one doesn't yet exist) than a real chemistry set.
I'm personally convinced the population of mundanes includes nearly all HS teachers (science included) & administrators, school board members, Congress, cops & most lawyers, consumer safety advocates and insurance actuaries. These people act on fear and depend on fear to keep themselves employed. They probably hated the "smart kid" in high school and feel smugly justified in using any opportunity to "prove" the validity of their prejudice and suspicions.
Being exceptionally smart in America is politically worse than AIDS. There are at least some unafflicted who support the AIDS-infected. The "overly smart" are, well... expendable.
Kids aren't afraid of science. It's politicians who fear that science will be used against them. That's why they're happy with this culture in which the word 'scientist' is nothing most people can relate to. A letter from 2000 qualified climatologists is something Tony Blair can ignore, he's more worried about the political opposition. A degree in law is now worth more than a real PhD. The bush adminstration has an official lutheran attitudes - refusing to support stem cell research, and you bet george dubwa wouldn't speak out against teaching evolution in schools.
That's why they love 'public debate' - which isn't that, just dumb journalists sharing their petty opinions amongst themselves - has brought society to the stage where most ppl during an episode of newsnight debated to a climate conference would side with Jeremy Paxman (because they think he's sweet on university challenge) than David King. Yes everyone is entitled to draw their conclusions, but to then present yourself as an authority is atrocious.
As far as the "Gaia Earth Theory" is concerned, I will say it went "downhill" into the religious side of things during the 60's and 70's, but I honestly don't see where "intelligent design" fits into it. Maybe I need to read up more on it, to understand what you mean...
From what I understand, the idea behind the "Gaia Earth Theory" is just an earlier example of what we know today as chaos theory, network theory, and the theory of emergent behavior. Combined, these theories seem to represent the same thing as Gaia Earth Theory, only backed by real science and learning. Furthermore, they have more accessible names, and not a name that brings in a bunch of religious relics and ideas with it (Mono/Dual Goddess/Earth worship, mainly)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
It's easy to extract hydrogen and oxygen from water, with a little bit of electricity. Hydrogen is a good explosive and only requires a tiny spark to blow off, as we all learned in chemistry labs.
Are they going to also prevent from using water? How about free beer?
This is insane.
You know that water is a poison? Oh yes, 100% of people who drink at least one glass of water will die! Autopsies show that over 99.9% of all murder victims have traces of water in their remains!
Only a select few are resistant to water, and can survive for as long as 100 years after drinking some, but even those lucky ones are overcome by the vile liquid!
If you ever drunk water, you, Sir, will surely die.
Replacing water with grain alcohol is the only answer to this terrorist infiltration, indoctrination, and inbibation of our bodily fluids!
As it is, other nations are whooping the USA currently in math/science areas, this most certainly will not help.
Well, it *is* a powerful solvent. After all, look at the Appalachian Mountains.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
I just set off a home made M80 before reading this. Geez it was loud!
When I was young, I always felt like my chemistry set was a poor imitation of what my dad had when he was a kid. Now I look at what's available, and mine looked like a goldmine of cool stuff.
Here's a newsflash: SOME CHEMICALS ARE DANGEROUS WHEN MISUSED!!! If people would properly recognise that fact and let idiots blow themselves up (rather than letting idiots sue companies for 'letting' them blow themselves up), then there would be less of a rush to legislate safety on everything, everywhere.
We're living in a world obsessed with safety and cleanliness. If it's dangerous or might have germs, it must be BANNED or STERILISED!!! God forbid we should actually live a little and accept some danger.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Yeah, I remember when Radshack sold science kits for those who wanted to learn, such as electronics kits for building radios and such or the chemistry kits this article mentions. However I recently went into one looking for an electrical kit and they didn't have any experimental/learning kits at all. Admittedly that was only one store and I haven't been to any others yet, but a Radshack without educational kits just doesn't seem right.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Do you happen to live in CA? I've heard some good stuff about Fly's Electronics, this is the first tyme I've heard anything negative. Looking at their location and hours webpage I see they're only in 9 states and I'm not in any of them. One place I loved to go to when I lived in FL was Skycraft. Parts weren't always where they were supposed to be but their employees knew both electronics and where you would find the parts you needed.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Terrorism dark age? Try a fascism dark-age. America has had one foreign-based terrorist attack, which killed 0.1% the number of people who have had their lives destroyed by the government for owning a plant that makes people happy for a few hours. Every terrorism-related death on American soil EVER, still doesn't add up to the number of people who have been accidentally killed by excessive police force over the years, nor does it rival the number of people unjustly sentenced to death because of their race and/or class. Terrorism is a mouse among men. America's authoritarian, anti-social government policies are the giant.
So you're scared of your neighbour buying heavy water, when the local Wal-Mart sells auto-action rifles and handguns? Man, are YOU stupid. That's some serious idiocy of the type you typically only see in people from the United... oh wait, NOW it all makes sense. An American, I should have known. The globe's most irrational cowards.
The level of paranoia about terrorism and the general lack of scientific understanding by the public in the U.S. has really got me scared. When you combine all this paranoia and ignorance with the restrictions on stem cell research and the teaching of evolution demanded by some religious conservatives, the U.S. is heading straight back into the dark ages.
I generally agree with you on the above, about research, where I disagree though is the bit about stem cell research. The government doesn't restrict stem cell research, it only pays for research when the stem cells used is from one of the previously approved stem cell lines. If they come from another line then the research isn't financed by government. The only way government should finance any research is if government gets royalties on anything that is commericalized and/or if the is research open sourced. Otherwise government has no business financing it. If all of the agencies, departments, and offices of the federal government that are not specifically authorized by the Constitution of the United States were abolished then the taxes needed to run government could be significantly reduced thus allowing people and privately funded institutes to spend more for research. The last tyme I checked most of these bureacracies aren't authorized.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Method #1 - large propane tank and a spark plug... ...
Method #2 - glass bottle, gasoline, and a road flare...
Method #3 - car battery, galvanized nails, and a candle...
Method #4 - flour, a fan, and a candle...
There's a difference between model rockets that use D Engines and model rockets that use ... considerably bigger ones. The only difference between the latter and a small guided rocket suitable for military use is the lack of guidance system and payload -- both of which can be arranged with proper knowledge.
Not that I agree with the feds on this, I think it's rediculous, but it -is- possible.
Post-Dunblane, a friend of mine who used to shoot for sport had to give up his Olympic-style pistols and his hobby. (And yet, he never fired a gun outside a supervised range in his life, while gun crime in general has gone up since the ban.) You get the idea.
I read some studies about the laws and crackdowns on firearms in GB. Though I don't recall how many of them I found, online, everyone stated that instead of decreasing crimes the crime rate went up, especially in London. One of them mentioned how this lady who worked in a government office had been attacked or harazzed while walking home from the office so she took to carrying a knitting needle with her. When the person who represented the area asked during a government meeting if she could be arrested for carrying a deadly weapon someone from the Home Office, that least I think is was the HO, said when she's attcked she should report it otherwise she shouldn't do anything. Well, I'm affraid by the tyme she's attacked it's too late. Unfortunately the US is getting to be the nanny state that's enjoyed in Great Britain. Australia is getting bad as well. I read how Australians on the Olympics sharpshooters team couldn't even practice their sport in Australia, even for the 2000 Olympics held there because of the laws against firearms.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Out of curiosity, would you need to consider the laws of the states that the cargo must be shipped through to get to you?
Constitutionally a state can't seize cargo that's outlawed that is transit between states where the cargo is legal, the interstate commerce clause.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The more important and disgusting thing we are teaching our children is accepting a police state in the name of security. We fought the cold war to ensure we had the freedoms Bushco is stealing from us. The fact that it improvishes the average citizen's ability to engage in chemistry as a hobby is just a side-effect.
That is, you don't have to shave them if you're way too hairy. Note that a more recent constitutional amendment extends this right to women too.
If you listen to music without paying for it, you are a fool. because by not voting FOR the song you like with your wallet, you're are effectively voting against the artist continuing to make the music you like. If enough people do that, good artists will be forced to do something else for a living. Support the artists you like by gritting your teeth and supporting their distribution method of choice. Or don't listen to the music.
I don't listen to music as much as I used to in the past. When I was driving I listened mostly to the radio but I haven't driven in more than 16 months. At home or when out riding my bike, rollerblading, or running I mostly listened to cds, some of which I bought from used music stores. But I haven't regularly listened to any for a longer period than I've driven, I listen maybe a couple of tymes a month. One reason I don't buy music is because of the price, especially when a cd only has one or two songs I like. I don't download or share any music, however if prices were lower I would listen and maybe buy more. I'd definitely buy more if I could buy new LPs, records. When they still sold LPs the first tyme I'd play one I'd record it on my reel to reel tape deck, yes that was a long tyme ago, then put the record away and listened to my tapes. Initially after records, reel to reels offer the best sound quality. Actually I noticed a couple of weeks ago that some stores are carrying new record players now.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Guns, capable of killing you quickly, were banned in the UK.
Now you die slowly of knife wounds. So that is being banned.
Next to go will be the fork.
All that will be left is the spoon. Have you any idea how horrible it is to be killed by a spoon? It involves scooping your brain out through your eye sockets.
I did my high school in Hong Kong in a International school following the British system.
If the regulators in the US of A hears about the stuff we did in a-level chemistry they would freak.
Once we made chlorine gas and stopper some into test tubes. One of my idiot partners took the stopper off one tube and stuff it into someone's nose. Smart.
Same group in a lab a week later someone overheats a reduction agent in a test tube. It went off like a mortor and the content shot out the window. There were people playing volleyball below. Good thing nothing ended up on anyone.
Another person took a whole roll of magnesium metal and dumped it into a beaker of 3 mole HCL. Made a fizzy cloud over the beaker.
A physics teacher teaching a younger class on basic chemistry spilt bromide solution. Sends the class away and tries to clean it himself and passed out from the fumes.
Chem teacher with a PhD showed us Potassium tri oxide which he said is explosive but ah well lets take some risks right?
All in all it was a lot of fun. And it continued at University where some dudes made a tank to generate hydrogen and hydrogen. They'd fill up those watercooler water bottles with the gas and set them off. Blew out some windows at the house.
Yep chemistry's too much fun for Bush.
This is absolutely appalling.
Over the past four years I have amassed over 200 different chemicals and plenty of labware for my favorite hobby, at a total cost of over $600, and I hate to think that they could cause my dreams for the future (not to mention the chemicals and labware themselves) to go poof, just because some of those chemicals are remotely related to drug manufacture (couldn't live without my potassium permanganate, nor, does it seem, can crack producers...) or explosives. My bottle of sulfuric acid by itself would raise plenty of suspicion, yet hundreds of times the amount that one bottle holds are produced in the USA per capita. As you've probably heard, it's involved in the manufacture of almost everything around you and me, but I can't have some for my own use because it could be used to make explosives! It all just goes to show you that a few people, none of whom are involved in something, can rarely resrict that something and get good results. In this case, that something is amateur chemistry.
In short, fear of chemistry (which has many roots) + our bureaucracy = our current situation. I laugh whenever I see packages that say "no chemicals added" - what could be in there, a vacuum? Whenever anyone speaks of something as a "chemical" it creates an extremely bad image.
Science means knowledge. Not just what we already know, but new things. Without my chemicals I'd just be doing the same old stuff that millions of people before me have done. With them, I have the ability to explore and create further knowledge. And that's what science is all about. The government has sent us amateur chemists back to the 1800s, while they and their "friends" of the high people in such industries as the drug and food industries have been abusing and exploiting recent discoveries, making trillions of dollars and leaving us to suffer, not letting us explore on our own and discover things that will actually help us.
If they're doing this under the guise of public safety and welfare, then they should ban water; after all, a single breath of it can kill...
SWYgeW91IGNhbiByZWFkIHRoaXMgeW91IGFyZSBv dmVyZWR1Y2F0ZWQu
neither time nor thyme.
Actually the spelling of "time" as I spell it, "tyme", is Old English. I came across the spelling years ago when I was in high school, I found it in the full edition of the "Oxford English Dictionary" and have used it since. Actually the first tyme I used it for a writing class the teacher took off points for what she said was a spelling err, so I dragged her down to the library and showed her the spelling in the OED. After that she got in the habit of checking the dictionary everytime I spelled a word differently than normal.
I love and grow herbs and used to hangout with others that did too and some of them suggested I use the spelling "thyme" as well. I've thought of it but it has a totally different meaning, while I sometimes spell words differently than "normal" I still use correct spelling for a meaning. As with "color", I use "colour". Since I ran into the OED I've been interested in etymology.
FalconShould there be a Law?
According to the DEA Chemical Handler's Manual, sulfuric acid is a List II Chemical. That means it is one of the chemicals which tends to be diverted to illicit drug labs.
Evidently sulfuric acid gets exported to South America for the manufacture of cocaine. It seems that DEA imposes List II regulatory requirements on all exports, transshipments, and international transactions involving 50 gallons or more of sulfuric acid to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, or Venezuela.
Sometimes they fool you by walking upright.
http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SO/sodium_ferrocyani de.html
Exerpt:
Toxicology
No hazardous according to Directive EC 67/548. FAO/WHO acceptable daily intake 0 - 0.025 mg kg-1
Transport information
Non-hazardous for air, sea and road freight.
Fock you!
Sorry, I had to say it.
Anyone who knows enough about physics to make that joke can't be all bad.
They have gone too far in this paroia over methlabs and terrorism just about every great chemist or engineer started out doing DIY home chemistry ecxperiments. What kind of country do we live in if the simple quest for knowage becomes a crime. This is not good for the country either as the US has been falling behind on science test scores and will fall behind the rest of the world if the pursuit of knowledge becomes a crime it will deter children from learning about science and there will be less engineers and scientists or at the very least less great ones. To make a very long story short it would eventually cause the USA to become a third rate has been of an economic and military power. Quote" Those who give up liberty for a little temperary securety will end up with and deserve niether ."
Benjaman Franklin
I agree this is a terrible crime being perputrated on futer generations. As a kid DIY chemistry was one of my favorite passtimes if I did not get that early start I might have never pursued a career in the sciences. As for methlabs making glassware illegal will do jack and sh** to stop them if you are even slightly inventive you can find other ways. As the article quoted the Mr coffee in every office has three things regulated in Texas A filter,a pyrex flask and a hotplate. Also many truely great inventions were done by home chemists and tinkers A good example would be an amazing subtance known as fire paste. If you care about the future of this country then you must keep science from becoming a crime as this country will very quickly fall behind the parts of the world that choose not to stifle the persuit of knowledge. As laws like this would have gotten 90% of the great scientific minds of the past century thrown in jail. This time these people have gone too far they messed with the holy of holies.
and I will give you thermite!