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?"

Comments

great article

[brookesy]

read a few days ago, great article. makes me wanna buy some explosives !

Re:great article

[ccarson]

Maybe now, considering the heightened tension, it wouldn't be the best idea to mix chems in your basement. If chemistry was your hobby and authorities did begin questioning you about your past time, it may help to back up your work with documentation and your membership to the local chem club. Definitely, don't start mixing chems that make bomb making substances. In the end, if worst comes to worse, you could argue your case in front of a jury comprised of citizens like yourself. As flawed as our court system may be, at least you can present your case to peers in hopes they will understand your passion.

Re:great article

[TheGavster]

If you truely can't do something harmless in your basement, then the people have lost.

Re:great article

[twistedsymphony]

Well really that's the only home chemestry that pays.

Something tells me the little old lady next door doesn't need anything titrated.

Re:great article

[qwijibo]

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.

good morning !

[jesusfingchrist]

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.

Re:good morning !

[porkThreeWays]

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.

Re:good morning !

[JTorres176]

You've seen their site, right? Radioactive isotopes, burning lasers, uranium, heavy water.... is this what you expect high school science teachers are buying, and Mom and Dad put in little Timmy's chemistry set?

These people aren't selling black powder and aluminum shavings to make fireworks, they're selling some serious shit that I don't necessarily want my neighbor to have mail-order access to, thank you very much. 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.

Re:good morning !

[meringuoid]

Radioactive isotopes, burning lasers, uranium, heavy water.... is this what you expect high school science teachers are buying, and Mom and Dad put in little Timmy's chemistry set? These people aren't selling black powder and aluminum shavings to make fireworks, they're selling some serious shit that I don't necessarily want my neighbor to have mail-order access to, thank you very much.

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...

Re:good morning !

[geminidomino]

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.

Re:good morning !

[pla]

You've seen their site, right?

Yup - Even (gasp!) bought stuff from them.

Radioactive isotopes, burning lasers, uranium, heavy water.... is this what you expect high school science teachers are buying, and Mom and Dad put in little Timmy's chemistry set?

Little Timmy can't walk into a liquor store and buy a bottle of Absolut and a carton of Camels, either. Your point?

None of the things sold by UN's site violate federal laws, or most state laws (most importantly, not my state and not their state, the only two that matter). If an adult wants to buy something with which they can blow their hands off or quite possibly kill themselves - Well, my friend, they need go no further than Walmart. If, however, someone wants to actually learn something in the process of blowing themselves up, Wallyworld doesn't accomodate that.

Re:good morning !

[Mr Pippin]

Apparently the most dangerous substance to possess in America, these days, is "grey matter".

Even more importantly, the use and development of "grey matter".

Re:good morning !

[JTorres176]

I assume you're not american, your neighbor probably has access to rocks to bludgeon you to death
 
OMG, teh Rox!!!
 
Everything can be used as a deadly weapon against an individual, not everything can be used to slowly poison mass numbers of poeple quite as well as radioactive materials with proper placement. Here in the old US of A, pot farms survive for years pulling in thousands of dollars a month in power bills for their lights and irrigation systems because power companies *gasp* are a business making money and don't give a shit, as long as Joe-Bob Hooch-Farmer pays his power bill that is.
 
Of course I remember the story of the radioactive boy scout who, in an attempt to provide a really neat experiment for a science project, damn near killed his family and neighbors out of common household radioactive products. Of course, he had to collect mass amounts of radioactive materials on his own instead of just buying them over teh intraweb.

Re:good morning !

[patchvonbraun]

If your neighbour wants to kill you, or your neighbourhood, they'd spend their money much more wisely by buying a few Kg of Warfarin at Wal-Mart or the local farm supply store. UN sells uranium ore. Big fat hairy deal. There are many of places where you can buy uranium ore, both in the "brick 'n mortar" world, and the online world. You'd be at it a very long time to process enough of it to make anything truly dangerous. And out quite a bit of coin, too. You can buy high-power lasers all over the net. UN doesn't have any kind of monopoly on high-powered lasers. Heavy water? I'm not sure what you'd use it for, but it isn't a particularly dangerous thing to have in your possession. More of a coffee-table curiosity than anything else. You should perhaps re-examine that phrase you used "potentially deadly materials without a system in place to verify identity". So, next time I'm at the metal store, they should verify my identity before I buy a 2ft piece of 2" cold-rolled steel. I could, after all, be planning to bludgeon somebody to death with it, and it's good to have an audit trail in place, should that ever be my evil plan. Better be safe and record everybody, all the time, for any kind of transaction of any kind. Just in case. In a country where children can buy guns and ammo at the local department store, I find it hard to understand why people are getting paranoid about a few mildy-interesting chemicals. Of course, the lay public generally regards CHEMICALS, OMG, CHEMICALS, as some kind of inherently-evil thing. Most folks, if asked whether they'd let their child put OMFG, Sodium Chloride, on their french fries would probably say "never! Are you some kind of monster?". But they're perfectly willing to buy the same substance from the grocery store, innocuously labelled as "Table Salt". That same table salt can easily be turned into a much-more-interesting powerful oxidizer, using a simple do-it-at-home process. Perhaps we need to register all purchases of table salt now. And charcoal. Oh, and trees, since you can easily turn trees into charcoal using a very common process. And since the urine of mammalian species can easily be turned into mixed nitrates, we'd better ban urine as well. Everybody cross your legs :-)

Management Culture

[monkaduck]

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?

Re:Management Culture

[polyex]

With a few sentences you have summed up a very serious problem with the USA. It makes you wish for another Soviet Union and and the days of the space race to get our ass in gear (perhaps China can soon fill this role of a worthy competitor?). Of course you will have lots of arguments for the current model of a giant brain suck, mostly the very people who could not achieve a Science degree because it was too hard and end up taking business. Outsourcing is simply incest.

Re:Management Culture

[speculatrix]

summed up a very serious problem with the USA...perhaps China can soon fill this role of a worthy competitor

don't worry about China becoming a competitor - we're already getting them to sign up to DRM, and once the number of lawyers there achieves critical mass, their society will also stagnate due to massively overburdening corporations and governments with beaurocracy.

you see, you have to remember: the purpose of management, marketing, lawyers and government is not to serve, but to take control and expand... it's only when there's just one person left in the world doing real work and everyone else is either managing him/her or duking it out in court over whether that person is licensed to do the work, that we'll all wonder where it went wrong!

Re:Management Culture

[Jim_Callahan]

"will also stagnate due to massively overburdening corporations and governments with beaurocracy"

So you're saying that they'll finally throw off the yoke of western cultural dominance and return to the way they were before Europeans arrived and screwed up their country? (Apologies to Chinese readers, but I couldn't resist.)

Re:Management Culture

[alexhs]

(perhaps China can soon fill this role of a worthy competitor?)

Perhaps not... All your base allready are belong to them.

You know that when you see "Made in China" on your typical US product. And they're putting Gremlins in those products, you know.

That's why US government don't want Lenovo computers. They know that perfectly, but they're hiding the existence of Gremlins to the general public. I fear there's a bigger conspiracy than Roswell here...

Re:Management Culture

[dwandy]

hmmm ... I'd always pondered 'What will the people be doing, one day when robotics are performing essentially 100% of the physical labour?'

now I know: Managing Lawsuits!

Re:Management Culture

[speculatrix]

So you're saying that they'll finally throw off the yoke of western cultural dominance and return to the way they were before Europeans arrived and screwed up their country?

not quite - instead of the gov't controlling everything, it will be corporations & their lawyers - so it will all be possible in the name of free enterprise + democracy rather than simply oppressive despotic rulers. However, I think despotic governments might be preferable to the RIAA/MPAA because at least nearly everyone is treated equally as mere peons.

Re:Management Culture

[Wylfing]

since the amount of money being spent on educating our young has diminished

I do not dispute your conclusion (that the quality of education has been in decline), but this particular statement is false. The dollar figures for education have been rising every year. Despite how it is construed, getting a 15% increase instead of a 20% increase is not a budget cut when student enrollment remains flat (as it has for many years).

I would argue instead that the money is simply misspent. When I was in K-12, the focus was on doing math problems, building vocabulary, and learning science and history. In other words, education. Now the focus is on shiny new buildings, universal Internet connectivity, self-esteem, and zero tolerance rules. When your main concern is that there is a "counselor" for every 3 students, and you're dumping real science education in favor of the FSM, you're very, very likely to produce the fat, contented, ignorant kids we have today.

A money shortage is definitely not the problem here.

Re:Management Culture

[oni]

Indeed. The *average* educational expendeture per student in the US is currently above $10,000 per year. As amazing as this sounds, it's actually cheaper to go to college - if you look at just tuition, the average cost of college is under 10K. Yet I'm sure we'd all agree that colleges do a better job than public schools. Why is that?? I believe it is because colleges have to compete with each other.

Think of what you personally could do for your own child for $10,000 a year. I'm certain you could find a way to give him or her a quality education for that much money. Yet somehow, the public school system can't seem to make that happen. According to them, they need still more money. It's crazy.

But the best part is, we are not going to fix it. We're not. Because we don't want to. If I even say the word voucher, some large portion of the people viewing this post will immediately stop reading. They don't even want to try. The only thing they are willing to try is "let's give the schools more money." Yeah, let's keep doing that year after year and see if anything changes. Ten years from now, we'll have this discussion again. The average cost per student will be $50,000 a year, and I'll ask, "what should we do to fix this" and the answer will be, "we have to give the schools more money omg!!"

Re:Management Culture

[MyLongNickName]

Why is that?? I believe it is because colleges have to compete with each other.

Maybe that is a factor. The larger factors are 1) Generally folks in college want to be in college. If a person doens't like school, he generally won't enroll in college, or will get himself flunked out quickly. 2) With college, it is your money, coming out of your pocket in many cases. My experience hass been that students who are paying their own way outperform (as a whole) over those who have mommy and daddy paying their way (as a whole). Competition, in my mind, is a tetrary reason for colleges getting a bigger bang for the buck.

Re:Management Culture

[bigpat]

With a few sentences you have summed up a very serious problem with the USA. It makes you wish for another Soviet Union and and the days of the space race to get our ass in gear (perhaps China can soon fill this role of a worthy competitor?).

Do we want to live in a society that needs to justify science in order to give it permission to exist? Science is its own justification, sometimes it will lead to useful tools to fight an enemy, but more often it won't. This article is about a return to a society based on fear of the unknown, a society which will dictate what is normal and require permission from the central authority for anything that is abnormal.

We can no longer rely on liberals to fight for true freedom. Liberals have won the right to dress funny in public schools, have sex with whomever they want and read and write about everything that they care about. But everything else is slipping away.

It is Your fault.

Science cannot truly exist in a society that does not respect the Right to bear arms. Science is a weapon.

Re:Management Culture

[kailoran]

in **AA/BSA-speak, getting a 15% increase instead of 20% would be called "a 25% loss"

Re:Management Culture

[beta21]

Science cannot truly exist in a society that does not respect the Right to bear arms. Science is a weapon.

I read this comment and was about to move on thinking, meh slashdot. But really this is insulting to scientists and ppl who love science, I seperate the two cause some scientists don't actually love science.

I'd like to believe Science exists b/c a society is curious about the unknown, not cause they want a bigger bang. I think our society has become more cautious and lost that pioneering edge. The rewards of researching are not as clear cut as certain short sighted money grabbing incentives, ok thats a bit prejudice.
When I was a kid there was a feeling of longevity, I went into grad school and met ppl who worked on things that would take decades to come to fruition. It seems that sense of longevity is gone now.

Nevertheless I'd like to think our advances in fields such as medicine are to uncover knowledge that will benefit all of us.

Re:Management Culture

[oni]

lets say, you get one guy in the neighborhood to teach 6 kids, and you each pay him the $10k

A more realistic comparison to public school: 20 kids in a class = $200,000 a year. You could easily rent a building, hire a custodial staff, buy all the books and other materials, and still have more than 100k left over to pay the teacher.

For high-school, you need a history teacher, a science teacher, etc. But there are still at least 20 kids per teacher, so the ratios still hold up.

I stand by my statement. It should be possible to educate a kid for 10K. A big part of the problem is bureaucratic overhead that you get with any large government operation. We could take care of that with privatization (but again, as soon as I bring that up, many people stop reading). The other big problem is parents that dont care and kids that are just stupid. We could take care of that by abandoning this notion of "no child left behind." We as a society need to accept that not everyone has the same gifts. Everyone is entitled to the same opportunity - the opportunity to attend school, but nobody is entitled to an outcome, that is something you have to earn.

And hey, that's the current situation anyway. Many kids go all the way through highschool and cant read. The only difference between the current situation and what I'm suggesting is that we stop spending money on those kids.

Re:Management Culture

[beta21]

Thanks for clarifying your point. You are right the research of science does carry an implicit risk, but this does not relate to a second ammendment issue. The progress of science has grown regardless of whether the citizenry has had the right to bear arms or not. Either way our lives have been enriched through scientific progress.

As you pointed out the govt. is bent on eliminating percieved threats, I'm not sure if its doing it for the citizenry or for itself.

Re:Management Culture

[oni]

Imagine that you're the emperor of the universe. You get to decide what school we're going to send these 100 kids to. You have two options:

Option A, we send the 100 kids to school A. 50 of them will learn to read. 50 of them will not.

Option B, we send the 100 kids to school B. 75 of them will learn to read. 25 of them will not. All 100 of them will learn the four tenets of Buddhism.

So, which school do you send them to? What is better for them? If you reject option B out of hand, you strike me as very intolerant and shortsighted. OMFG! The horror! Someone might have an opinion that differs from yours! OMFG! We can't have that!!

Personally, I'm an atheist. I'm just not threatened by people who believe in spaghetti monsters or whatever. What matters to me is that in addition to believing in spaghetti monsters, they also have the educational background to make our society work. The situation that we have right now is *worse* than belief in spaghetti monsters.

If you're worried about evolution not being taught, let me put your mind at ease. For vouchers to work, there would have to be yearly standardized tests, and any school where kids are not being taught evolution would not be allowed to take vouchers. Such a school would go out of business. What this means is, it would absolutely impossible for a school to refuse to teach evolution. What this means is, I could guarantee you that no matter what school a kid went to, they would receive an education that met a certain standard - guaranteed. But I know, that doesn't "put your mind at ease" because I know that the real problem here isn't your deep heart-felt concern for our educational system, the real problem is your intolerance (of people who are wrong).

I imagine you as the pilot of an airplane with engine trouble. The copilot (that's me) points out that we could land at Microsoft International Airport, but you angrily shake your head. "HELL NO! I'M NOT LANDING AT NO MICROSOFT NOTHING! FORGET IT! THAT'S OUT OF THE QUESTION!!" And while you're hemming and hawing and screaming about your own bright shining self righteousness the plane crashes. Congratulations. Great job.

The US public education system is an abject failure. That's a fact. And you wont even consider solving the problem.

How about this. What if we instituted vouchers along with the requirement, "for a school to receive voucher money, it cannot teach any kind of religious course."

I bet you'd oppose that too. And that basically proves my point.

new chemistry

[samsonov]

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?

Laziness & the Government

[eldavojohn]

Sure, the innovative will try to work around these types of limitations, but are we teaching our kids to be afraid of science?

No. At least, if you're afraid of terrorist witch hunts then it's your government telling you to be afraid of science, not the people.

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:

The search was initiated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal agency best known for instigating recalls of faulty cribs and fire-prone space heaters.

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:

Last year, China graduated 500,000 engineers; India, 200,000; and North America, 70,000.

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.

The U.S. trade balance in high-technology goods fell from $33 billion in the black in 1990 to $24 billion in the red in 2004.

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.

Re:Laziness & the Government

[kjart]

Last time I checked, the United States was not the only country in North America. Perhaps the US should be more afraid of losing the geography race? :)

Re:Laziness & the Government

[Yvanhoe]

I don't know how is the trend on the other side of the Atlantic, but here, in Paris, last time I went to a Fnac (a bookshop akin to Virgin Megastore, with less music and more books) asking for a mathbook (had to re-read some courses) I was given a strange look and redirected toward the 'science' books, in the 'philosophy' shelves. Gaaah!

Speaking as a chemist...

[Mr. Underbridge]

...you shouldn't be using the kinds of chemicals they were selling at home anyway. *I* wouldn't use those at home. It's not safe, as you will not have, at home, access to the proper safety equipment including proper fume hoods which would cost you at least tens of thousands of dollars to install. If you're not a chemist, you also won't have proper training and experience to deal with accidents that can become disasters.

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.

Re:Speaking as a chemist...

[Flying pig]

Speaking as a former technical director and designer of chemical plant, for the sort of quantities and hazards that home experiments produce fume extraction would NOT cost tens of thousands of dollars. You can home build a garage extractor system for a few hundred dollars (and if you work on cars it is useful for extracting e.g. degreaser fumes) which has enough capacity and exhaust velocity to handle solvents.

You can in fact go out and buy caustics (sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide) from the local hardware store, supermarket or builder's merchant. You can accidentally create chlorine gas quite easily using common household products. You can buy lethal poisons almost anywhere. It would be BETTER if more people had practical chemical experience because at the moment Joe Public is mostly totally unaware of the risks he runs. He is afraid of "acid" because he does not know that acidity alone is harmless. He is unafraid of bleach, caustics, solvents, and any alkali which comes in a brightly coloured plastic box. And your solution is?

Re:Speaking as a chemist...

[lxs]

You're right. It's not safe. You can get hurt. But taking all the risk out of life is even more dangerous.

When I was young I did many stupid things, and I sure hope you did too. It's all part of growing up. When you take all the risk out of living, you're not only creating a race of bored couch potatoes, but you're also creating people who will do stupid things like mixing chlorine and ammonia while cleaning the toilet, and who will panic when things get out of hand.

After all, play is in the first place a preparation for adulthood, it teaches common sense around danger. And common sense in these matters is something that seems to be lacking more and more these days.

People who haven't had small accidents when they were young, will have big accidents when the are grown up.

Re:Speaking as a chemist...

[patchvonbraun]

Speaking as someone who uses "those types of chemicals" in my home workshop all the time,
    I have to disagree.

Life comes with risks, and rational adults learn to deal with and mitigate those risks.
    We wear bicycle helmets while bicycling, have a garden hose on hand when we have a
    bonfire, etc, etc.

United Nuclear, like Skylighter, Firefox, Iowa Pyro Supply, and many others, supplies chemicals
    to amateur and professional pyrotechnicists all over the world, and to a lesser extent, the more
    generic "home chemist type".

The article casts chemicals like "perchlorate" in the light of "makes bombs", which is misleading.
    Yes, perchlorate can be used to make bombs, but it's also the main ingredient in a large number
    of other pyrotechnic effects which *don't* go boom. In many places in the U.S., home manufacture,
    for personal use, of fireworks is entirely legal. Check out respected organizations like the
    PGI (Pyrotechnics Guild International), who have hundreds of members in the U.S., and who regularly
    put on a large exhibit of home-manufactured fireworks.

The government, and the lay public, are increasingly of the opinion that anyone who does anything
    after work other than chug a Pabst and watch their 57 channels of dreck is a terrorist, or
    about-to-be terrorist. Which is a sad state indeed...

Re:Speaking as a chemist...

[IAmTheDave]

You're right. It's not safe. You can get hurt. But taking all the risk out of life is even more dangerous.

Yes, but the day of risk taking is over. I did a lot of stupid things too, but the difference between you and me and the kid that didn't survive the accident is that that kid's parents have now lobbied Congress or local authorities to outlaw the very thing that killed their kids.

Until we begin to accept again that there is indeed a level of acceptable losses, we'll forever be stuck in this overly-sterilized world.

That's the very point of this article. Lessons are learned through taking risks, and without the ability to take risks and learn said lessons, people grow up more ignorant and in the end, more of a risk to themselves.

You'll never truly know how long it takes to decelerate from 60mph until the first time you slam on your brakes, no matter how many times you've read it in a book. You'll never know how hot the stove actually is until the first time you burn yourself as a child, no matter how many times your parents have told you to not touch.

Oh well...

Re:Speaking as a chemist...

[b0s0z0ku]

Did you look at the list of chemicals these people are selling? It wasn't crap like acetic acid. It was things like perchlorates.

Explosives? No, just powerful oxidizers. But, then again, you can (or could?) buy SolidOx over the counter at many welding supply shops. As the name implied, SolidOx is a solid oxidizer for welding purposes that could be used to make explosives if you really wanted to.

Face it - some people will find a way to kill themselves! And the 0.0001% of the population that happen to be psychopaths will also find ways to kill/maim/manipulate others. The solution is to arrest and try those people if they do happen to do their worst, and either jail them for a long time or execute them.

-b.

Re:Let them have explosives and biological weapons

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Your attitude is precisely summed up in TFA:

unreasonable fears about chemicals and home experimentation reflect a distrust of scientific expertise taking hold in society at large. "People who want to make meth [or weapons -wmf] will find ways to do it that don't require an Erlenmeyer flask. But raising a generation of people who are technically incompetent is a recipe for disaster."

You are willing to impoverish future generations in exchange for a false sense of security.

Or Electronics

[MichaelSmith]

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?

Re:Or Electronics

[MrSquirrel]

The TSA apparently thought my computer (in an Antec SuperLANboy aluminum case) was a bomb -- they ripped off the heatsink and processor and pulled the video card out of its AGP slot (while it was still screwed in). Not to mention the once-shiny case with an easy-to-see-through side window panel now has tons of scratches and dents on it from them improperly trying to open it (it appears they tried prying it open with a screwdriver -- there are 2 thumb screws on the back [can you say "duhhhh"]). Seems like airport security people are monkeys who couldn't tell a bomb from someone's mom. Still haven't seen any money for it either.

Re:Or Electronics

[courtarro]

It makes you wonder what their real goal was, given the guise of "we think it might have been a bomb". If you really think something in a mysterious (to you) box is a bomb, why on earth would you pry it open and start pulling things apart, clearly with no real understanding about electronic devices?

If your job is to open things up and find bombs, then what's stopping you from simply opening up everything, even if every common sense bone in your body says "this is a legitimate product, not a bomb"? After all, this is just some traveller's crap, not mine. The whole thing reaks of undertrained staff who are not properly overseen and managed, and who have no deterrent from their superiors against unnecessary searches.

Then again I think it's possible that they do this sort of thing as retaliation against travellers who confuse them; as punishment for people who try to travel with devices that they can't understand. They're subtly saying "if you want to be different, which makes our job more complicated, we're going to make your life more complicated. This guy thinks he's hot snot and probably makes more than me - I'll show him."

Re:Or Electronics

[erroneus]

Speaking as a prior TSA screener, I must say I am only a little surprised, though, surprised just the same.

Procedures call for opening and searching baggage. Equipment is tested only on the outside and if an alarm cannot be resolved the situation is escallated to someone who can make further decisions on the matter. Dismantling equipment is NOT part of TSA training or instruction. That said, I don't recall that they are instructed to NOT do that either. I think perhaps making them understand a list of things NOT to do would be pretty effective in such situations.

The personalities of the people in TSA are quite varied but I tend to limit them to a few categories:

1. I just want a government job [so I don't have to work...] AKA I don't really care

These people are the least threatening to property, freedom or anything else. They don't care. Not much more to say about it than that.

2. I'm a patriot and I'm the first line of defense against terrorism!

These people are confusing "first line" with "most important line." The TSA, at least as far as airport security is concerned, should act only as a loose filter to help ensure air travel safety. These people really think they are searching for Bin Laden in baggage and in people's pockets! "Overzealous" would be the best words to describe these people. The most positive thing I could say about them is that they would do their job for free.

3. Wannabe Cop!

This is a separate category from the #2 group in that they look at everyone as if they were a criminal with criminal intent. They wear their cloth badges and patches with pride and only feel weakened by not be allowed to wear a firearm. If they were qualified to actually BE a cop, they would... so we already know they have some inherent deficiencies that would disqualify them from actually BEING a cop. Let your imagination go wild and you're still probably not too far from the truth where it comes to their psychological disposition.

4. I'm just doing this because I can't get any other jobs

I was a member of this category. I did my job. I did it as well as I could under the circumstances. I mostly just followed rules and tried to mind my own business... I learned to do this only after I attempted to assert myself when I saw things that were "wrong" for correction and failed. After learning how pointless it is, I continued my job search and eventually got back into my career. I knew a lot of people in the same boat back then.

Now as far as personal property damage and such, I have to say that it's not as common as you're making it out to be. However, you do need to keep escallating the issue if it's important to you. There is always someone higher to contact about the issue until, frankly, they are tired of hearing from you and will eventually resolve the situation to your satisfaction. I don't know how the denial of claims is determined only because I've never seen a denial before.

It also helps to question them about their documented procedures. They will claim that their procedures are not available for public disclosure. That's essentially true. But if you catch them in a lie, you've got some leverage. You can ask specific questions about whether or not something they did was part of standard operating procedure or not. They will either confirm or deny whether it's part of procedure... you might have to press the issue. I'd be a little surprised if they didn't answer the question and resorted to "we can neither confirm nor deny..."

Good luck to all who reported similar problems. And YES, don't trust valuables to your luggage. That has been true since before the TSA was conceived. Frankly, when I'm travelling overseas and I want to bring some snazzy souvenirs or products home with me, I'd just as soon SHIP it to myself. It's often more reliable and less prone to damage and needless inspection. Plus, there are more definite ways to insure your shipment against theft and damage.

The new American project

[Oldsmobile]

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.

Re:The new American project

[Jim_Callahan]

Nah, it's a restriction of knowledge. Dumbing-down is the widespread acceptance of very much oversimplified models as the entire truth of the matter, like genetics/eugenics in the early century (didn't end well), evolutionary theory (didn't end well... for college applicants from Kansas city, anyhow), and economic theory in the 90s (i like to call what most people think of as the "internet bubble bursting" the "bunch of stupid investors crash of the 90s"). If most people just avoid the science, it doesn't really harm the people or the science (though it doesn't particularly help either). What I'm worried about is the masses embracing science and getting it wrong. Humility about our lack of knowledge, that's the key.

In the case of chemistry, of course, this would self-correct a lot faster than eugenics was, as individual amateurs can kill themselves a lot faster with organic chemicals than a set of bureaucratic machinery can churn out obviously stupid laws. That doesn't necessarily make it immune, though. Idiots try to mix their own explosives all the time.

Re:Awww =(

[Joff_NZ]

It's what some some countries (UK, Australia, New Zealand) call year 11 (11th grade?) of schooling.

Good For America

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Chemistry supports terrorism.

You're not a chemist are you?

Exactly what the terrorists want

[Tetard]

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.

Terrorist paranoia not the only cause for this...

[BetaJim]

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.

the paranoid religious right

[FudRucker]

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"

Not that easy

[Moraelin]

"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.

That's right, blame the chemicals

[MikeRT]

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...

Re:That's right, blame the chemicals

[91degrees]

Absolutely. Anyone who doesn't go there in their American made SUVs is clearly a terrorist.

A great new age

[porkThreeWays]

This will be a great new age. We will call it... the... ummm... Terrorism dark ages!

Shit...

Re:A great new age

[Skreems]

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.

Chemistry sets

[sdo1]

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

End of the World FUD

[thelizman]

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.

Top tips for parents and toys

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

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.

Re:Top tips for parents and toys

[kthejoker]

Way to rip off The Onion. It's called karma for a reason, dude.

So....

[ArchAngelQ]

I guess it should be changed to:
Sufficiently backward education makes technology indistinguishable from magic?

Zero risk society

[smchris]

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?

I'm not completely worried...

[Gadgetfreak]

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...

Re:Awww =(

[the_doctor_23]

Thats why thermite is AlO and Fe(s) powders mixed together, not just Fe ground up by itself.

Actually, thermite is a mixture of iron oxide and aluminium powder...

Re:Awww =(

[hotdiggitydawg]

Nice... I remember one of the questions in our chemistry textbooks was something along the lines of "Here is the molecular structure for cocaine. Find three different chemical mechanisms by which it could be synthesized."

So help fight it with your family!!!!

[BigDogCH]

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)?

Re:Yet another example of the "terrorism" catch-al

[fredg]

no

The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments

[mmarlett]

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.

The basement was my university.

[dpbsmith]

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.

Hm

[argStyopa]

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".

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 .... 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?)

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?

Re:Awww =(

[dsci]

Since when is sulfuric acid 'regulated?' It's the most used industrical chemical in existence, and I can get all I want from autoparts stores (or car batteries themselves). I've ordered cases of the concentrated stuff from suppliers and never had to fill out a form (though it has been a few years since I've done so).

Re:Awww =(

[ozmanjusri]

You're education was better than mine

Thank you. That's a keeper!

If you "should" have it, you can buy it

[Opportunist]

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.

Say what?

[Lord Bitman]

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 good old days - the bad old days...

[OldChemist]

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.

Re-run

[tomstdenis]

Happened to crypto in the 90s and communism in the 60s.

Face it, americans just don't like thinkers.

Tom :-)

The Fireworks Foundation

[cubes]

The Fireworks Foundation is working to preserve hobbyist pyrotechnics, including funding legal defense against the CPSC in their efforts to restrict chemical sales.

The Fireworks Foundation is an organization devoted to the preservation of the fireworks hobby.

The primary purpose is to ensure, in perpetuity, the existence of hobbyist fireworks and clubs by:

1) Funding the necessary legal defense, both civil and criminal, to protect and preserve our rights and privileges under existing law.

2) To fund, create and develop teaching, outreach and training programs in pyrotechnic operator instructions and in seminars and publications on related topics.

3) To be of aid and assistance to fireworks clubs in time of need.

4) To work with individuals, governmental entities, business entities and communities as needed to further the cause of hobbyist pyrotechnics.

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.

Re:Let them have explosives and biological weapons

[blamanj]

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.

Happened to me with my modem too

[Moraelin]

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.

What's happening to our societies?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

I had a cool chem kit as a kid, but liability...

[blueZ3]

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.

Re:Also Speaking as a Chemist, I say Bullocks

[dsci]

I'd ask what these techniques are.

Well, part of it is a mindset that comes from knowing that you are handling something dangerous. If you remove all the danger from a teaching lab (danger from fire, from acute toxicity, etc), you remove the mental aspect of "be careful."

I've observed this trend over several decades. It is not that older chemists are more cavalier, it is that they tend to be more careful due to proper training. But with the confidence that comes from having that proper training, they are not afraid to handle things. Nowadays, many programs eliminate the danger from the curriculum, and thus eliminate the training in the form of the mindset required to handle very bad stuff. I've handled some of the most toxic substances man has ever known, but believe me, when I did, that was not the first time I handled something that could kill me instantly.

The indoctination that has happened, imo, is one of 'safety first' according to some external definition. The problem is that the modern world tends to define the acceptable level as "no risk," which is impossible. A properly educated and trained chemist (either by formal training or by many years of garage experience, etc) knows how to weigh the risk and manage it. Talk to some of your older colleagues, those trained in the 1950's if you can pin them down, and ask them about the differences in how chemistry is taught today vs. then.

The dilution of education is a bit alarming. This safety aspect is but one example.

This happened to us too, but it was DEA

[Doug Coulter]

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.

Re:Terrorist paranoia not the only cause for this.

[SubRosa]

No kidding! 10 years ago, I got carded for buying dry ice at a grocery store. Just recently (the past year or so), Red Devil Lye, a staple for home soap makers, has gone missing. Both are purported to be victims of the Neverending War On Drugs. Ditto the behind-the-counter report-too-many-bottles-sold of that cough supressent (robetussin?).

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!

Re:Wisdom follows, pay attention

[John Courtland]

Come on. Uranium is hardly a weapon of mass destruction. Using the logic that since you can kill someone with a specific property of an object, the object should be banned from public use is dumb anyhow. You can kill anyone with anything, as a close example, smoke detectors contain radioactive Americinium. Get enough and not only can you severely poison someone, but you can make an atomic pile. Put that in someone's offie and they will die too. People die, people cause other people to die, welcome to the harsh reality of planet Earth.

It's not fear of terrorism...

[b0s0z0ku]

... it's the 'nannies' in society that are responsible for this particular raid. 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.

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.

Re:When home chemistry is outlawed...

[Disoculated]

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?

We Teach Our Kids To Be Afraid, Period

[Illbay]

I have struggled with this for some time now. I'm in my late 40s. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, therefore. Come summertime, we hit the door at about 7 or 8 in the morning, and didn't show back up 'til sundown (we took sandwiches or lunch money so we could cut the cord to the house for the day).

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?

What if the Government doesn't like you?

[spun]

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.

This is about illegal explosives, really

[novapyro]

Which is the real issue, and it has been getting worse and worse over the years. It's about the drug war effort - the terror war has just widened the net a bit.

No. I have direct experience with the CPSC on this issue; it really is about illegal explosives.

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

Hydroponics and Grow Lights

[Pchelka]

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.

Crazy old Lazar

[PhotoGuy]

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).

Re:Terrorist paranoia not the only cause for this.

[russotto]

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.

Forbid water!

[flibuste]

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.