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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?"
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
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.
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 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
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
"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...
Everyone, I've got bad news. America has been cancelled. Yes, I know. But we had a good run. No government should really run past 200 years anyway. The episodes get old and stale. *golf claps*. Ok let's pack our things we're off to ruin Sweeden.
It's a pity that we are in a terrorism dark age. I remember I cut my teeth in science doing somewhat explosive experiments. I don't think I would have had such an inquisitive mind had my only science been dropping a basketball and a baseball at the same time to see which falls first.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I guess it should be changed to:
Sufficiently backward education makes technology indistinguishable from magic?
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
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
I presume you're American? In that case, your neighbour has access to firearms. If he wants to kill you, he'll do it with a gun, not with OMG TEH LASERS!!!
I suspect that if you wanted to kill somebody with the uranium sold here, your best bet would be to bludgeon them to death with it; it's heavy stuff, uranium. Getting a critical reaction going is difficult, and I think somebody would notice if your neighbour started running a centrifuge farm or a bunch of calutrons to enrich his uranium. So would the power company, for that matter; they already spy on their customers to catch people running hydroponics farms, as part of the War On Some Drugs...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
If they want to shut down people who sell potentially deadly materials without a system in place to verify identity, I'd say that's not exactly limiting my freedoms, but protecting my life.
You and every other coward who values false security over liberty.
Congratulations, you and your ilk are killing America.
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.
Apparently the most dangerous substance to possess in America, these days, is "grey matter".
Even more importantly, the use and development of "grey matter".
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
Exactly. Only pirates will own mp3s, only hackers will own compilers (outside of the workplace), and only terrorists will own home chemistry sets. The age of the producer is falling, and soon you'll need to be licensed by a corporation before you can be anything but a good little consumer.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Anyone who lives their life based on fear of the extreme cases is going to be miserable. At some point you just have to find the right balance of freak and normal behaviors. If you're doing a lot of things that may be borderline illegal, you probably want to also be a productive member of society. Appearances count. You don't have to like that, you just have to accept it.
There are so many laws that everyone violates some of them. Most houses have chemicals that could be used in the production of meth or pipe bombs. If the police want to go after you, they can find something. If the DA wants to prosecute you, he just needs to give a subset of the available facts and tell a story that compels a jury to find you guilty. The defense has to explain why those facts are being used in a misleading way and tell a better story to get off.
Amateur chemists need to understand that there is some potential risk in what they do. However, that is probably true of most hobbies. Nothing is completely safe. If you give someone a reason to investigate you, or just have bad luck, you'll have to justify your actions to someone who only cares about getting another prosecution, regardless of whether or not justice is served. The only way to avoid that is to do nothing and wait to die. Actually, that's would probably be suspect too. The chances of getting hauled off to a gulag are pretty small for people who aren't doing anything wrong. Like with all things in life, just do what you're going to do and hope the odds work in your favor.
I realize you're saying this in jest, but a better second part of that statement would be, "Only corporations will do chemistry." I don't like sounding like an anti-business reactionary, but we're seeing more and more of these situations where due to liability, licensing, and security concerns, only large businesses are seen as capable and 'trustworthy' enough to persue technological advancement.
Which is crazy, of course, because corporations are bound by design to be interested only in developments with visible returns on investment and restricted only by the ethical constraints that may get said corporation sued. There's no interest in investigating random or merely 'interesting' things that can produce the really interesting and exciting diamonds in the rough of unexpected discovery.
The amount of resources to do research can be remarkably small. The tools to run a small bacterial lab can be aquired for a few thousand dollars, and a chemical lab costs about the same (used centrifuge, a bunch of glassware, thermometers, agitators, water baths, etc). Sure you won't be doing DNA sequencing, but you can maybe make your own superglue or discover a bacterium that has interesting soil-fixing properties. The tools that Pastuer used won't cost you very much in today's market. But you'll never be able to get insurance or convince your local newspaper that you're legit because you don't have a quarterly report.
Are we willing to trust all our future scientific advances to the same people that want to put DRM in movies?
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.