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Home Science Under Attack In Massachusetts
An anonymous reader tips a guest posting up on the MAKE Magazine blog by the author of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. It seems that authorities in Massachusetts have raided a home chemistry lab, apparently without a warrant, and made off with all of its contents. Here's the local article from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. "Victor Deeb, a retired chemist who lives in Marlboro, has finally been allowed to return to his Fremont Street home, after Massachusetts authorities spent three days ransacking his basement lab and making off with its contents. Deeb is not accused of making methamphetamine or other illegal drugs. He's not accused of aiding terrorists, synthesizing explosives, nor even of making illegal fireworks. Deeb fell afoul of the Massachusetts authorities for... doing experiments... Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for [the Massachusetts town of] Marlboro stated, 'I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.' Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: 'Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down.'"
... that something is wrong with Kansas ?
These hyper-red and hyper-blue states both have issues with people. The former set of control freaks try to make you a religion borg while the latter set of control freaks try their hand making you a state-uber-alles borg.
Chemistry for chemistry's sake has been banned all along. Check out this article on how to get your banned pdf copy of one cool 1960s chemistry book with some not-so-cool experiments...
Sounds like the actions of typical small-minded, small-town bureaucrats who are skilled mainly in keeping and expanding their power.
This is what the environment of hysteria is doing to the US.
Who exactly is terrorizing us these days? Seems like our "elected officials" just want us to be scared all the time so we won't really think about what's going on.
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
SO call the FBI and complain that the local police entered and arrested you without a warrant. Call the local and national media. Make a big stink about it. Start a website. The Massachusetts police are morons and they need to be put in their place.
There are regulations about how much [of various chemicals] you're supposed to have, how it's detained, how it's disposed of.
Depending on the specifics of what this guy's dealing with, he may be subject to rules regarding the safe disposal of certain chemicals, etc.
Amnesty International
I wonder how long before people in possession of scary "hacking software and equipment" are subjected to similar intrusions? Welcome to the NewUSA, where all knowledge is classified.
Caveat Utilitor
If you have enough laws, then anyone is a criminal. They'll either claim its a violation of zoning ordinances, environmental hazard or an OSHA violation.
From TFA:
"Mr. Deeb's home lab likely violated the regulations of many state and local departments, although officials have not yet announced any penalties."
If they discovered that you were keeping 200 cats in your home under extremely unsanitary conditions, they would do the same thing: move all of the cats to a shelter somewhere, and charge you with violating local health regulations once they had assessed the entire situation. I think it's a little bit of a kneejerk reaction to say that they're "ignorantly and irrationally afraid of chemicals" and "abus[ing] power to steal his property".
Would you rather they just ask him "hey, is any of this dangerous?" and leave when he says "no"? There are reasons why we regulate stuff like chemicals (you have to have a permit just to own / use some professional beauty products), and if he wasn't following whatever the local regulations were, then it's his fault.
Now, if it turns out he was indeed following all local / state laws, then the authorities certainly owe him an apology at least.
Don't you?
This is just another representation of the government attempting to control the lives of citizens under the guise of protecting the masses.
Although he could be using his home chemistry lab to do illegal things, the government should not be allowed to enter and seize on the ability to do wrong, only on the reasonable suspicion.
If the ability to cause problems was a legitimate reason to stop someone from practicing their hobby, then what about gun enthusiasts? What about drunks? And what about people with cars?
I don't care if you have a home chemistry set, just don't blow up my house.
Once you infringe on my rights, you're in the wrong - and that applies equally to the government!
So his ''crime'' was to do something slightly different from the rest of the population.
Then I got to thinking: What is normal, what does Mr average do in his spare time ? Does this mean that anyone who does anything except: watch TV, visit shopping malls or go to the pub is weird and so under suspicion ?
I think that I'll put my walking boots on and think about it on a long stroll .... drat - that'll put me under the microscope :-)
There are always people with authority and the stupidity to use it. So he's been shut down, yes it's terrible - and illegal - and unconstitutional. Perhaps the best way to show your outrage: buy his book: at $29 bucks, why not? That way, just in case justice is not done, he will be able to be well financed to return to his work.
The EAA had the same fight about home builders. :)
For those that don't know the EAA represnts people that build their own airplanes or restore old ones. At least one town made it illegal. The EAA usually fights such things and often wins.
Too bad there isn't an EAA for Chemistry.
BTW I am a member of the EAA
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
Stupidity is more than happy to cross party lines.
Probably thought he was developing a new kind of hoax device.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
There have been similar problems for those who handload ammunition. "Oh my god, this man had 12 pounds of gunpowder in his garage! And look at all this ammunition! It's an arsenal of destruction!"
And no, that's not hyperbole. It's happened. Generally only in places like California or Massachusetts, with their high proportion of Gun Fearing Weenies(tm), but not exclusively.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
When the officer says, "This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation," he's implying a zoning violation. It can be answered with, "This is not what we consider to be a customary neighborhood nuisance." Zoning laws should protect people from things like junk yards, car dealerships and noisy manufacturing. Going after this man is a stretch of those intentions.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Now, a bunch of silly fools that never took chemistry even in college are doing their best to outlaw what every intelligent child in the 60s and 70s did for fun.
As a result, the US has not been doing groundbreaking chemistry in over a decade.
Granted, computers are a big lure, but chemistry is the basis of our industry. We need to ENCOURAGE kids and adults to do chemistry, not prevent it with idiotic, foolish laws.
If it is not more dangerous than fertilizer and diesel fuel, or styrofoam and gasoline, than it should be legal for a 16 year old kid to buy in the mail, without a license.
Anythinge else is rank hipocracy and stupidity.
P.S. I am not recommending a 12 year old do explosive experiments unsupervised, but I hate to tell you, THEY DO IT ANYWAY. They just go and get an aerosole can and a lighter, instead of ordering a kit.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The following link is to the "inspections" division of the city where the zealot works. Phone numbers and emails are listed. Just an FYI http://www.marlborough-ma.gov/Gen/MarlboroughMA_Inspection/index
"Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: 'Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down."
appears nowhere in the linked article, yet kdawson has chosen to sensationalize by adding his own words and making it look as if they were part of the article.
In fact the article actually states:
"Mr. Deebâ(TM)s home lab likely violated the regulations of many state and local departments, although officials have not yet announced any penalties. "
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
From the article: "Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws."
After reading the article, I'm pretty unimpressed with the selective quoting in the blurb. Not only were laws broken, but from the description of the house, it sounds like there was at least a little reason to want to investigate, if perhaps not launch a cleanup. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.
I find it troubling that hobbyists are less trusted than corporations (assuming that these same experiments, performed by a corporation, would pose no problem - which I think the above quote pretty clearly implies). First, it is a really stupid idea from the American economy standpoint - we've made a lot of hay in this country's history on garage hackers (think: personal computer, for example). Second, what exactly makes corporations (which are made up of individuals) more trustworthy than non-corporate individuals? Timothy McVeigh? USAMRIID Anthrax. This is utterly stupid, and clearly the result of a panic'd mind more concerned with a pretense of safety than with the success of this great nation.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Really, the above is a bit far from the inflamitory accusations of ironshod goosestepping that the blog author insinuates.
There is a difference between having a hobby bench and doing 'science' and running a chem lab. One is harmless, the other is only harmless when you take the proper safety percautions.
—Men in Black
As usual on Slashdot, what the submitter says happened and what the article says happened aren't the same.
According to the article:
A fire broke out on the 2nd floor of the subject's home. In the process of responding to this, firefighters found a LOT of chemicals, about 1500 different ones to be exact. The home was not zoned to be a chemical lab, so doing so much chemical work there violated zoning laws.
So while it's quite fun to blame "evil" governments, had a fire not broken out nothing would have happened. And nobody who's railing about the government seems to have any smart ideas on how a home user is going to properly dispose of chemical waste in a legal and environmentally sound way. For all we know he was just dumping stuff down the toilet, which probably isn't legal.
Recruiting for the navy, perhaps? Maybe advertising for the YMCA?
I find ignorance to be basically politically agnostic. It's just that different political groups choose to be vocally ignorant about different matters.
Pretty much what you'd expect. Looks to be your garden variety petty bureaucrat, overly impressed by her little bit of power.
You had to make me look, as I was quite surprised about that law. But here it is: http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/criminal_law_enforcement/narcotics/narcprecursor.htm
What's the big deal?
This is yet another example of the end of freedom, that's what. This is one set of people deciding that you are making the wrong choices with your freedom and they need to make all your choices for you from now on.
They want to choose
- your hobby,
- what games you can play,
- whether you can smoke,
- what you can drink,
- what you can eat,
- what kinds of cars you're allowed to drive,
- how fast,
- where you can live,
- how you celebrate the 4th of July,
- how much money you can make,
- how much money you can pay your employees,
- how you raise your children,
- what jokes you can tell at work,
- the precise mix of fuel in your gas tank,
- what health care you are to be allowed,
- who you can rent housing to,
- what's on your cable TV,
- and what days you can water your lawn.
What's the big deal? Why don't we all just make exactly the choices you might make and then we'll never have a problem?
And the worst thing: the only "solution" people talk about is getting "person C" to be in charge of making everyone's choices for them instead of "person D".
I contacted Ms. Wilderman, who actually answered her phone. http://www.marlborough-ma.gov/Gen/MarlboroughMA_Inspection/index
Pamela A. Wilderman Code Enforcement Officer 508 460-3765
She stated that the fire department was called for an apparent fire on the 2nd floor of Mr. Deeb's home. This allowed the firemen entry into the house. Upon further investigation (of the basement for a 2nd floor fire) the firemen discovered the chemicals and brought in the authorities.
Ms. Wilderman said "We have zoning laws for this purpose, the firefighters were called into what they thought was a single family residence only to discover unmarked chemicals in the basement, he had a chemistry lab down there, in an area zoned residential". I informed her that I had an electronics lab, and beer brewing equipment in mine to which she made the comment "I bet your neighbors are thrilled about that". Of course I don't think my neighbors even know because they all mind their own business.
Anyway this brings up a series of questions. Were the chemicals truly unmarked? Mr. Deebs is a retired chemist, surely he would practice some type of protocol. Second, if his activity is not illegal where is the justification of not only seizing the items, but then stating they will be disposed of. Will Mr. Deebs be reimbursed. What if they went into the basement and discovered a person to hand loads his own ammunition? It is a perfectly legal hobby practiced by shooters all over the country. Would they have seized those items?
Finally, I would love to hear Mr. Deebs story on this. His reputation is being destroyed over a simple hobby.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Even the newspaper article linked by the person making the sensational claim doesn't support the claim. The story appears in several places and the facts in each don't support the thesis that "Home Science is Under Attack".
The chemist in question had a fire in his house. While the fire department was responding to the fire, they happened upon the lab with an unusually large array of chemicals and equipment. They asked the man what he was doing with them and he noted that he was a retired chemist, doing his own development at home now, and was even patenting and marketing some of the things he developed.
The fire marshall was concerned that the lab might pose a fire hazard and contacted the DEP per the usual protocol, and they went through and checked it out. They notified the town of the situation, who noted that he was doing commercial chemical R&D (by his own admission, he was) in a residential area in violation of applicable zoning laws. The DEP was required to "close" the lab and clean up any chemicals for which there's a prescribed disposal procedure (e.g., you're not supposed to pour large quantities of it down the sink).
The guy broke zoning laws and he got caught because of an unrelated fire in his house. That's it.
According to the newspaper article "most likely" violated numerous state and local regulations. Nobody is tossing out specifics because the town isn't planning to issue a citation. At issue is "how much you're supposed to have, how it's detained, how it's disposed of" in a residential area. So the issue isn't "experimenting", it's storage, processing and disposal at a facility not zoned for those purposes.
Common sense will show you that the scale of experimentation makes a difference. Making a few quarts of biodiesel or a few bars of soap, that's home experimenting. Making a thousand gallons of biodiesel or a thousand pounds of soap is an industrial process. There isn't a precise line between chemistry set stuff and industrial production, but it's there. Making four gallons of beer a week is a lot for a home brewer, but making a hundred gallons a week probably means you've "crossed some line".
The story doesn't really give us enough details to know whether the raid was justified, or served any public purpose. That depends on what they expected to find, why the expected to find it, and what they actually found, none of which is at this time public knowledge. We don't even know what level of government initiated this, it appears it was the town.
One thing that's almost certain is that the search did not require a warrant. It is what is legally called an "administrative search". According to the dictionary an administrative search is "an inspection or search carried out under a regulatory or statutory scheme esp. in public or commercial premises and usu. to enforce compliance with regulations or laws pertaining to health, safety, or security. One of the fundamental principles of administrative searches is that the government may not use an administrative inspection scheme as a pretext to search for evidence of criminal violations."
So the health inspector doesn't need a warrant to check on the crazy lady who has 200 cats in her house, which is a code violation even if its perfectly permissible for her to have 2 cats, or even 20. Likewise I can have a dog or two, but I can't run a kennel in a densely populated suburban neighborhood unless I have a zoning variance (and possibly pay commercial tax rates).
You can argue that there shouldn't be such thing as zoning regulations. And its probably true that there are many places where there is little or no purpose to them. But zoning laws and administrative searches are NOT unconstitutional, at least by the interpretation of the Constitution that has held sway for a century or more.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
40 years ago, this man was considered the norm. We did chemical experiments in our house. NOBODY thought it was bizarre. This man writes a book on how to learn about chemistry at home and they raid his home without a warrent?????? Here in America, We have entered a VERY dark age.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Jackson County Michigan just got rid of such a petty bureaucrat. She was an animal control officer that put a pig farmer out of business because his pigs were in the mud. Well, the problem is that mud is necessary for pigs well being, it helps them keep from getting sunburned and it cools them. This same officer then (about a year or two later) raided a horse farm because she didn't like the way the horses looked (remember these horses are livestock not pets). A vet friend of mine looked at the horses and didn't see anything wrong - yet the county found some lackey vet to say that there was a sick horse in the herd (a very common occurence when you have more than 2 horeses). The upshot of this story is that the animal control officer no longer has her job and the county is getting sued for the value of the horses they confiscated and sold at auction. I would expect that this ordinance officer will meet the same fate when the agrieved party hires an attorney and sues both her personally (for civil rights violations) and the city/county for other things. These things have a way of working themselves out.
Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for [the Massachusetts town of] Marlboro stated, 'I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.'
The actual article says:
Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboro's code enforcement officer, said Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws. It is a residential home in a residential neighborhood," she said. "This is Mr. Deeb's hobby. He's still got bunches of ideas. I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation. ... There are regulations about how much you're supposed to have, how it's detained, how it's disposed of."
Either the poster didn't properly read, or he/she just considers zoning bylaws useless. For those that do think zoning bylaws serve no point, let me reference the recent propane explosion that occured in the middle of a Toronto residential neighbourhood, leaving two people dead and hundreds of homes damaged, and is now the subject of a zoning review
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
And on the fourth corner, there is a bar with a sign out front that says "No loitering by order of the Pope."
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Cool book.
What other books are banned from public libraries? There must be a list somewhere.
I found this:
http://title.forbiddenlibrary.com/
and this:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html
but, dammit, I've read most of them. Where are the really bad ones?
You can join me in Hell during:
Banned Books Week
Celebrating the Freedom to Read
September 27â"October 4, 2008
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.cfm
Uggg... more knee jerk reaction to a pretty obvious case of prudent police work.
There's a fire in his house. The fire dept. and police come, and put out the fire. In the process of putting out the fire, they notice hundreds of vials of chemicals. Not in a rack, not on a shelf, not even on a table, but all over the place. On the floor, on furniture, everywhere. No reasonable chemist would be dumb enough to do that with any chemicals.
What would you want the police to do? Walk out without doing a little due diligence? There's a good chance he is storing these chemicals unsafely, and he is endangering his life and possibly others as a result. So they call in the experts to clean it up. And then they take a look at what he's done wrong, and probably will give him a fine and a slap on the wrist.
It's amazing how many Slashdotters don't even bother to do a bit of research before coming to their black-and-white conclusion about how The Man is bad and this poor fellow is being an upstanding citizen with his rights violated. How dare the police invade this man's home! It's an attack on science! They hate the science!
RTFA!
There are alot of Slashdotters that seem to take pride in their critical thinking, intelligence, and analysis skills. Honestly, alot of you really don't demonstrate it very often here. It's more like a lynch mob than a bunch of intelligent people discussing issues.
Do you propose I play with it in a balloon indoors? If I get arrested for doing something stupid, I'd feel a little better knowing my family won't get soaked in the next rainstorm because I blew the roof off the house.
The above is pretty funny, for certain values of "it"... I mean, you soaked your family? Blew the roof off the house?? Dude...
Bow-ties are cool.
Any good fascist state function due to the hard work of strict compliance officers such as Pam Wilderman. Her work phone is (508) 408-4118. Give her a call and congratulate her on her good work.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
None of the materials found at 81 Fremont St. posed a radiological or biological risk, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. No mercury or poison was found. Some of the compounds are potentially explosive, but no more dangerous than typical household cleaning products.
Most people would be really pissed if the had to spend several days in a motel because the fireman found a can of Draino and a bottle of vinegar downstairs in the basement
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Probably the best teacher I ever had was a Chemistry professor at the University of Washington. "Wild" Bill Zollar. Fantastic storyteller. Anyway, he was telling us about his time as an undergrad at the University of Alaska. He was majoring in Chemistry to he could graduate in time to take a trip he'd won to Hawaii. Well, he ended up being responsible for reacting left over WWII sodium metal to get rid of it. As we all know sodium metal + water = exothermic and sometimes BOOM. (This is how we knew this would be a good story.) So he and his TA are up late doing this. And the TA says "Hey want to see something cool?" So they take a chunk of sodium metal and throw it in a fountain. BOOM! Splash. Yay! So the TA says, more or less, "Ok goodnight. Have fun doing this increadibly tedious job, unsupervised, by yourself, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. I'm sure nothing will go awry." So here he is with untold kgs of sodium metal, reacting little slices of it with water. There's no one to go ride bikes with, and he's a smart young man with apparently poor impulse control. So he soaks some rags in oil, and wraps up a few bricks of sodium metal. Binds them up. Puts them in his car and proceeds to drive out to the nearest dam. So he stops the car over the water, tosses the parcel off and proceeds to drive away. Nothings happening, "Mission Accomplished." Before he gets across the water a 400 foot column of flame which must have lit up his car is busy burning down some guys outhouse on the bank behind him. Of course he went on to do other things, like thermite a trolly to it's tracks outside Harvard while he was at MIT, and then all kinds of important and extremely valuable work.
He's lucky they didn't hang him as a witch.
Well when the INHERENT freedoms of the founding fathers were being tread upon by the "Lawful Authorities" they started shooting them. I'm not suggesting it as a recourse only stating that it is a traditional and patriotic American solution.
Through family associations, I was able to go to a wonderland place as a kid, the chem lab at an oil refinery. I was given the most excellent glassware and stuff that they were replacing. Top line gum rubber hose, fittings - on and on. I had a a "lab" in my basement that was, as you might imagine, pretty amazing. I messed with lot's of things; gun powder and such, acids, bases, wow. You could buy sulphur, saltpetre, ribbons of copper, zinc, magnesium, brass tubing, glass tubing ... all the the Newberry's Dime Store! They had a huge selection of chemical wares in little glass bottles with blue and white labels.
This article really made me float back 45 years and once again I was standing, transfixed in front of the huge wall of little jars, imagining what I could make. I run networks now days but my experiences with chemicals and labs were some of the best times I had as a kid. I went electronics but ... what could I have made??
Anyone that would have shut me down is unthinkable and wrong. I endangered no one but myself, if at all. I was very careful. My parents applauded and supported my efforts - they supported everything creative that I did and they were the best.
So ask Ms. Wilderman what 6.02 x 10 to the 23rd is? If Pam can't answer, she shouldn't complain.
Man, would I be pissed if I ran into that.... :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This drives me crazy. My hobby is microscopy, and it is nearly impossible to get the supplies I need - and I am a pharmacist. After pondering this dilemma, I started carrying a number of chemicals, and repackaging them in smaller portions for the group of people who share my interest, and I charge cost for them. Every time a health inspector or Board of Pharmacy inspector comes in I have to explain and justify why I carry these "exotic items". I used to get Nitric acid from the local pharmacy when I was a kid just by saying it was for my chemistry set. Things have sure changed.