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How Regulations Hamper Chemical Hobbyists
An anonymous reader writes "Chemical & Engineering News just ran this story that relates how government regulations create a terribly restrictive atmosphere for people who do chemistry as a hobby. (A related story was previously posted.)" The article gives some examples of why hamfisted regulations are harmful even to those who aren't doing the chemistry themselves: "Hobby chemists will tell you that home labs have been the source of some of chemistry's greatest contributions. Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family's bread. Charles Martin Hall discovered the economical electrochemical process for refining aluminum from its ore in a woodshed laboratory near his family home. A plaque outside Sir William Henry Perkin's Cable Street residence in London notes that the chemist 'discovered the first aniline dyestuff, March 1856, while working in his home laboratory on this site and went on to found science-based industry.'"
When your bureacratic reactant
Is but a silly distractant
Try the anionic surfactant:
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I am a hobby chemist. I make things like pies, cakes and coconut cookies. Tonight the kitchen, tomorrow the world!
Chemical Hobbyist? Is that like a drug user?
Today the mad scientist can't get hazardous chemicals, tomorrow it's the mad grad student! Where will it end?!
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
The top part is a range. The baking part is an oven. The entity as a whole is a stove.
Of course, you could also bake on the range, but that's not as easy as just figuring out which part is the stove.
Solution: give controlled access to chemicals to irresponsible people in a way that ensures no other people are harmed. No more irresponsible people => problem solved.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Remember, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate!
P.S. The irresponsible ones will blow themselves up anyway. Good for keeping full fire department employment.
Now all the tinkering is just done in labs that have access to "controlled" substances. It has the same effect. We have regulations to stop people who are a few neurons shy of a full brain (probably from playing with too many chemicals) harming themselves or others. There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
I make soap, partially for fun and partially due to allergies. I had a neighbor say "You're allowed to do that?" with total disbelief. I also make bread (not on the same day), and had the same reaction.
I imagine that any kind of scientific exploration is viewed with distrust and quite a bit of fear. My son has recently discovered the world of electronics, and I feel bad for him since even radio shack doesn't carry what it used to.
I wonder if this shift is endemic in our country, from a nation of strivers to a nation purely of consumers.
--
Keep One Eye Open on Craiglist.com - Search hundreds of communities from one place with one click
meh
have been done by hobbyists, i humbly submit this isn't possible anymore. all of the historical advances made by hobbyists were done decades ago, involving simple concepts. all advances today are not simple, but require the support of an advanced facility, simply because all of the fundamental, simple advances in chemistry have already been scoured
similar to hobbyist game makers of just 20, 30 years ago, and how there is no way they could compete on the same footing with modern mainline game studios and the high end graphical renderings they crank out
however, i also humbly submit that if you want to tinker in your shed, try genetics. genetics is still very much a frontier where the fundamentals are still being worked out, and although much equipment required for genetics research (centrifuges, gel electrophoresis, etc.) are still expensive, none of it is outside the realm of the committed hobbyist
i fully expect to see lone hackers working on the human genome in my lifetime. on the plus side, they break the monopoly of conglomerates who claim intellectual property over our genetic heritage. on the negative side, well, they are hacking the human genome. if the ethical considerations of that will give anyone pause
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
And yet we let damn near everyone drive.
Are you suggesting that these regulations have no effect on the potential for people to discover new things?
I'd argue that irresponsibility can't be fixed by any amount of regulation. Attempts to do so only make it more difficult for the responsible to contribute to society in positive ways.
Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family's bread.
You should never use the same equipment for your chemistry as for your other household things. If you're going to do chemistry at home, do it safely. This means having a separate (well-ventilated) room for your work, and using separate ovens, microwave, glassware, and other equipment for your work. Chemical contamination is a real threat. You may look at a chemical reaction and deem all the reactants and products to be safe... but if you make a mistake you may contaminate a room/oven/glassware with a more dangerous side-product. And you do not want to be then ingesting these contaminants (worse, you do not want to expose your family and friends).
So, like I said, be safe and use dedicated equipment for your experiments. (And don't brush your teeth with the toothbrush you use to clean your test tubes.)
There are very few such labs which allow "tinkering". Such labs tend to be run either by for-profit entities which expect you to do profitable work, or research insttitutions which expect you to do work which will get you grants.
In any case, the authorites come down even on non-controlled substances, as the article indicates. What chemists consider "dangerous" isn't the same as what the authorites do. From the article, one Nobel Prize winning chemist talking about his home lab: "I don't have anything that is dangerous in my lab. I have many chemicals in small amounts--salts and buffers" as well as some organic solvents, such as methanol, Shimomura says."
Methanol is both highly toxic and highly flammable. That's what the authorities would call "dangerous" if they raided his lab (though they wouldn't blink at gasoline). I'm guessing many of those salts are at least poisonous.
In the US, even crystalline Iodine is regulated now... but a popular YouTube video made by a free-thinking chemistry hack shows how to make it at home quite easily. Which makes the regulation nothing but expensive bullshit.
I wouldn't be opposed to that. That's just hard to set up in real life. :)
Don't let people experiment with stuff that they might be able to make a bomb out of, or a meth lab because we law enforcement agents can't tell the difference, and besides, only terrorists and criminals are interested in chemical reactions. right?
That says nothing about the fact that even if it is illegal, terrorists, criminals, and drug czar wannabes will still have their labs. This can only hurt the honest law abiding citizenry.
It's about time we had much less government interference, and more government support of engineering and entrepreneurship in these United States. Do you have any idea what it costs for a safe chem storage locker? If price is not enough, they put regulations out to make it near impossible to do simple things, never mind experiment with any chemicals.
Why would someone want to do that? Hmmm perhaps you might be looking for a heat transfer fluid for a closed system solar power electric generator. Perhaps you are experimenting to find the optimum chemical recipe for heat transfer fluid on a home/earth heating/cooling system for your area. Perhaps you are trying to create a cheap cleaning solution that is environmentally friendly. There are hundreds of reasons that someone might want to set up a chemistry lab at home for hobby use. I mean seriously, if you find a cheap clean easy method to convert old motor oil to some sort of valid fuel... go for it. Perhaps you find the exact chemical soup required for quickly biodegrading rubbish or plastics in a quick ecologically sound manner.
The roomba did not come from government research facilities or even Boeing or Lockheed-Martin. Why should we expect that all chemical discoveries would come from commercial enterprises? That's just fucking stupid.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Worse yet, we let them pro-create. Protect them from blowing themselves up and let them create little replicas of themselves. The antitheses of evolution.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
America's culture of the 21st century is a culture of fear. People fear what they don't understand and because of the modern age of fear selling tactics. If people actually learned something in schools instead of public school being a social experiment, then the public might understand intelligent hobbyists such as this.
Instead, the media has labeled every science hobbyist as a mass murderer waiting fora chance to unleash their techno-death on the world!!! Mwuhahahah!!! Then it will be robot apocalypse!! Dogs and cats living together!! Mass hysteria!! YES!!!!
So you are anti-create then?
No, he con-creates. And then he makes sidewalks out of it.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
If you are really home on the range, you can cook anything anywhere.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Playing with chemistry toys could eventually enable you to do weapons, despite its good uses. A lot of things in a plane (from scissors to suspicious liquids like breast milk) in a plane could be used as weapon eventually.
But of course, is legal, even is a constitutional right or something similar, to own weapons, things that are only meant to kill, in the US.
Irony kills too, lets ban it.
Without wishing to sound like a libertarian, this is true for a great many things that are regulated - from the outside those regulations either a) are totally uninteresting, or b) seem pretty reasonable. But when you're on the inside of whatever activity is being regulated it's often the case that you can see how stupid/harmful regulation is.
It's not unlike watching a news report on TV about something you're familiar with. You see how badly they butcher the subject, and then start wondering what they do to subjects you don't know about...
We have regulations to stop people who are a few neurons shy of a full brain (probably from playing with too many chemicals) harming themselves or others. There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
This might make sense except that restrictions on who can drive are a lot less restrictive. Even though you'd have to be manufacturing high explosives to get anywhere as dangerous as a car.
And chemical labs don't want people at home making any discoveries so the labs can make all of them and profit.
What kind of search engine kills people when you do a search?
- Raynet --> .
Get your PDF copy here while you still can of the number one classic kids chemical experiment book that's been banned from libraries for decades.
you could also bake on the range, but that's not as easy as just figuring out which part is the stove.
I guess you meant figuring out which part is the OVEN. :-) BOTH parts are the stove. But actually thanks for clarifying -- I always thought the range was the stove and the oven was not. And can you really bake on a range? My cooking world is being turned upside down this morning!
Put a lid on a pot. Bake inside. Use a thicker pot for more temperature uniformity. Use a rack to keep your baked goods off the very hot bottom surface.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
It's quite possible to make explosives and poisons using only household chemicals. *sighs* All it takes is a few weeks of study on the Internet, a decent library, and some systematic note-taking.
But you can't stop that sort of thing without prohibiting oft-used household chemicals. So it's not widely talked about.
The general public hasn't got a clue about what is or isn't dangerous, and neither do most of the Authorities. Starting with the police.
It's long since ceased to be about ensuring safety for neighbours and society at large, it's simply cover-your-backside regulation on part of otherwise clueless officials.
It's Ok that something's done to prevent people from building complete plastique factories and amphetamine laboratories in their basements, but with a little common sense and some understanding of chemicals it's s completely doable to safeguard the neighbourhood.
Register people with home laboratories if you must, but leave them alone. Like HAM radio amateurs.
Hey, we said it was Beta. -- Google
Is this hypothetical idiot making nitroglycerin in a packed elevator? Do you have any real idea how much high explosive it takes to cause the kind of mayhem you're envisioning?
You want to see something that will really freak you out?
Go read up on Tannerite. This stuff is loads of fun, 50 state legal, and available over the internet. What you'll find even more amazing is that as far as I know, not a single person has died from it's use.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
No! The only way you could have the antithesis of evolution is if the rules of the universe were changed such that the things more likely to survive became less numerous over time.
What you are doing is projecting some kind of value judgment onto a natural process, which should be rejected by the logical mind. If you're so concerned about the unintelligent procreating over the more intellectual people in an overthrow of evolution, perhaps you should consider what larger, smarter species various insects might have driven to destruction over the last 400 million years.
That said, human society is about more than just natural selection; we have the reasoned ability to choose what is better long-term, rather than simply allowing immediate survival to determine everything.
Sorry for the rant, but if you let these ideas stick, they tend to spread.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
The trouble about using Methanol as an example, is that it can be acquired completely legally as it is freely available in "Methylated Spirits" which is basically a mix of Ethanol and Methanol, the methanol added to stop people drinking the ethanol. (Methanol is poisonous).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zubbles
After an unexplained breakthrough in his kitchen, he was able to produce blue bubbles.
Popular Science named them the "Innovation of the Year" for 2005, and Reader's Digest said they were one of the "Best Innovations" of the year in 2006.[1]
I suspect you are trolling, but the mods giving you +5 Interesting have apparently bought your post whole.
http://yarchive.net/explosives/nitrates.html
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
You can find methanol - and a bunch of other toxic, flammable solvents - at a good hardware or auto supply store. Most gas-line dryers are methanol. Just keep your methanol in a Heet bottle and you won't get a second look.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
When I was in High School, I set up a full lab, with the full array of chemicals like Sulfuric Acid, Hydrazine, Ethyl Acetoacetate etc etc. I learned a tremendous amount and made some interesting chemicals, but in hindsight I have serious reservations:
1) Most people will have a very hard time coping with hazardous waste in a proper fashion, and the temptation to cut corners will be irresistible.
2) If you look at the current state of chemical research, you'll see that the home hobbyist *HAS NO CHANCE* of keeping pace with a modern research lab. Palladium catalysts? Glove Boxes? Preparative Chromatography? NMR? Organometallic chemistry? Suzuki couplings? If you want to advance the state of the art and make meaningful contributions you need heavy tools nowadays. Yes, you might find something interesting, but most all of the easy chemicals have been made.
3) The risk of fire, explosion and toxic contamination is very real. Someone trying to distill a liter of THF in their garage is asking for trouble, and if my neighbor was doing this I would be very concerned.
If someone wants to spend $600,000 and lease space in an industrial park, more power to 'em, but it doesn't sound like a hobby at that point.
I eventually packed everything up and took it to a 'hazardous material collection day' run by the local fire department. They were quite surprised, and it all went off to a HazMat landfill.
I must have been 7 or 8 when I got my first "ChemCraft" chemistry set for Christmas. By the time I was in Junior High, my best friend had a well-equipped chem lab in his basement, and I had one in an unused upstairs bedroom (my father even ran in gas for my bunsen burner). We used to make regular trips (driven by parents, of course) to a local science supply business to purchase glassware, chemicals, and such.
Now we have stupid paranoid lawmakers passing stupid paranoid laws, and even stupider fogbound bureaucratic government agencies enforcing the laws in a totally ham-handed manner.
Aaaarrrrgh!
Is there **ANY** way to get rid of all this idiotic nonsense?
(I could suggest that we elect Libertarians to **ALL** public and lawmaking posisitons, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen ... anyone have a better idea?)
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
"give controlled access to chemicals to irresponsible people in a way that ensures no other people are harmed."
The irresponsible people are allowed to buy incredible amounts of extremely hazardous materials like fireworks, while many chemicals that require qualifications, to even know what to do with them, are heavily restricted.
But then, someone wishing to do harm to others, can cause a lot of damage with just some gasoline and a lighter. The chemical isn't the danger, its the actions and intentions of the people using it.
Therefore the solution isn't to be found in ever more extra controls and banning parts of chemistry, its to be found in psychology. (We have enough controls on chemistry to avoid accidents, but ever more controls can never stop some people causing intentional harm towards others).
The answer to this problem is actually easier, than the relentless government solution of continued prohibition, of anything else they detect that can be used to harm others. There will always be things that can be used to cause harm to others. There will also always be new things found that can cause harm to others. Prohibition will never work. Its always going to be less than required. Plus they cannot block everything. (Even a house brick can cause harm to others, so they cannot ban house bricks). The solution of prohibition of chemicals and even at times, knowledge itself cannot work.
Psychology shows why people cause harm to others, for their own gain. The harm is caused intentional, there is a reason why they choose to cause harm to others. Only when enough people learn how to recognize the psychology of the ones who cause harm towards others, can we finally move towards a world, without fear of people causing intentional harm to others.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
I grew up with a heroin lab on one side and a dog owner on the other. The dog owner was a constant irritation from day one, with the dog barking at all hours and crapping on the lawn. The heroin lab were decent neighbors who didn't really affect us until the night the cops came. Make all the meth/heroin/whatever you want, but keep your blasted dogs away, I say!
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
It's true, you raise an important point about the mad scientists. How is one supposed to perform mad science without the requisite chemicals? I suppose next they'll ban the use of decorative Tesla coils...
But there's another angle: we have to consider how this kind of legislation impacts the upstanding, college-educated, pipe-smoking benevolent scientist. How is Small-Town-Plagued-By-Bizarre-Monsters to be saved if their local College-Educated Scientist can't perform the experiments necessary to find the one chemical which will defeat the evil fiends? How will the comrades of said scientist defeat the monsters if they can't travel to a nearby chemical supply warehouse to get the chemical they need in sufficient quantity?
Now, not all monster scenarios require a chemist, it's true. From time to time a monster will appear whose one weakness is something as simple as Sodium Chloride ("Ordinary table salt!") - but what about the monsters who are vulnerable to sodium in its pure form? Or what if defeating the monsters requires large quantities of hydrochloric acid, or Potassium Iodide, or any one of a number of other sciency-sounding things?
Yep, before you know it we'll be overrun by superintelligent ants or fish-men or mole people or giant lobsters and then we'll just wish we hadn't cracked down on all this science!
Bow-ties are cool.
That's what this site does
http://www.unitednuclear.com/
I love the "Looking for some Uranium" gif.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I don't care what "dangerous" chemicals terrorists or any other boogeyman can get their hands on in general. Thats because context matters: that's what compound(s), time, location, amount, etc. We can be reasonable about which chemicals are banned for the home hobbyist, which are restricted (by amount, or maybe a background check) without practically banning dihydrogen monoxide like we are now. Besides everyday household products can contain large amounts of dangerous chemicals anyway. If I want to make home-brew napalm without using any illegal chemicals, it'd be pretty easy to do (dangerous, but easy). Freedom is 100% dead long before you can get 100% security...which doesn't exist anyway.
I discovered the uselessness of nitrogen triiodide as a high explosive in my home lab.
Other findings:
- It will explode if left underwater, but can be kept for long periods of time under ammonia
- It's difficult to get a good report because you can't clump it- the crystals are continuously letting off little explosions as it dries
- Clumping kitty litter gets around this nicely
- After very long periods of time under ammonia the crystals change color from black to a very bright orange- for reasons that are not clear from the literature
- If it gets on you or your clothes you can expect to be snapping and fizzling all day
- Try not to make too much
You've got that backward. Evolution is never long term. The only things that survive are those that survive right now. The cockroach about to get stepped on doesn't get to say "Hold on, your species will probably destroy itself in a nuclear holocaust, leaving us to survive. So we're clearly the better species and you shouldn't kill me". The optimum you're seeking is not a product of natural selection, but of reasoned choice of direction. Evolution says "the stupid, breeding ones win; they're the ones that are propagating into the future". Reason says "Wait a second..."
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Except it wasn't chemical labs passing these laws, most labs want to decrease the regulations so they don't have to waste their time following them when they don't make sense. Also as a general rule, most chemical companies have an interest in innovators at home. It seems to me that most research that goes on in those labs are things the average home chemist wouldn't be able to do in their garage. How many garages have NMR capabilities?
It seems to me then that competition from home labs is pretty limited. Anything you DID discover in your basement that would compete with a major chemical lab would probably be very interesting to that chemical lab, because they could replicate it themselves for cheaper.
Anyway, your conspiracy theory is a bit ridiculous.
Right- hes a first tier citizen. The rest of down here are the ones that have to worry.
Hum no not really. Regulations are always supported by insiders as a way to protect themselves from outsiders. The existing corporations have political power, the unborn competitors don't. Generally speaking, the state is a system by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
\u262D = \u5350
It's one thing if a city or HOA wants to limit the kind of chemicals and experiments people can play with in their jurisdiction, but blanket federal laws about it are a different story because they affect the guy living 50 miles from a paved road just a much as someone living in a 200 foot^2 apartment in Manhattan.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
The old saying "the more you know, the less that you know that you know" doesn't apply to everyone, like this guy:
http://blogs.kansascity.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/03/boyscout.jpg
Sure, David Hahn was delving into radioactivity, but same principals apply to goofballs playing with chemistry.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292111,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
Unfortunately, it's idiots like this guy that causes all sorts of overly protective legislation that keeps us from having real chemistry sets.
I hate to tell you this, but killing 20 people is already illegal. I know it's a shocker, but it's true.
Now if that same idiot decided to get up to 60 in his car and swerve onto the sidewalk, he could also kill those 20 people. Or if he decided to grab *insert any tool here* and go on a rampage, well, it might not be 20, or it might be more.
In no instance will any new laws keep someone who wishes to cause harm from doing so. Perhaps it may impact the scale, but there is as great a chance that it would result in a creative burst (i.e. thinking out side the box) and result in more harm. With the car example, said idiot may in fact kill 30 by doing something different.
The long and the short of it is this: You can't regulate crazy.
Any attempt at balance is limiting those who never would cause harm in order to *possibly* halt the few who would. As I stated above, murder is already a crime, yet it is not onerous because it does not limit us, rather it punishes those who choose to break from societal bounds. Chemicals, alcohol, drugs, and firearms, while potentially dangerous, do not in and of them selves provide the impetus for causing harm. Any harm that comes from such items is the result of choice, and no law can make people make good decisions.
You might have a point, except that the social costs of prohibition are much worse than those of regulation. If you really care about "extended social costs", you'd support policies to minimize that cost. Policies such as regulation, and treatment of addicts, instead of just throwing them in jail and forgetting about them. What do you think the extended social cost of turning millions of otherwise well adjusted, non-violent marijuana smokers into criminals is?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Won't the bread come out a bit smelly though?
Tom...
.
In the U.S., consumer fireworks are regulated - and legal purchases in "incredible amounts" is difficult and expensive.
The Federal Hazardous Substances Act, prohibits the sale of the most dangerous types of fireworks to consumers. These banned fireworks include large reloadable mortar shells, cherry bombs, aerial bombs, M-80 salutes and larger firecrackers containing more than two grains of powder. Also banned are mail-order kits designed to build these fireworks.
In a regulation that went into effect December 6, 1976, the CPSC lowered the permissible charge in firecrackers to no more than 50 milligrams of powder. In addition, these amended regulations provide performance specifications for fireworks other than firecrackers intended for consumer use, including a requirement that fuses burn at least 3 seconds, but no longer than 9 seconds. All fireworks must carry a warning label describing necessary safety precautions and instructions for safe use.
The Commission has issued a performance requirement to reduce the risk of potentially dangerous tip-over of large multiple tube mine and shell devices. Tip-over of these devices has resulted in two fatalities. Consumer Product Safety Commission: Fireworks Fact Sheet
The fact sheet summarizes state regulations as of June 1, 2008.
If you want to do chemistry, why not do not do within the framework of a chemistry club - associated, perhaps, with a local high school or community college?
This is - after all - how many dangerous sports and recreational activities have been organized for a century and more.
You want to work with antique sporting arms?
Join a black powder gun club. You'll learn more and learn it more quickly - while still keeping your eyebrows intact and all ten fingers.
My regime proposes that, if elected in to power, the following regulations will be put in to place:
1) All citizens will be reversibly sterilized at puberty.
2) Reproduction will be licensed. The license can be obtained upon successfully passing IQ and parental competency tests. A credit check will also be required to insure that only citizens financially able to care for offspring will be able to reproduce.
3) In the event that parents later prove to be incapable of raising a child, their offspring will be confiscated and raised in a sanitary state-run facility. In this event the parents' breeding license will be permanently revoked.
My regime feels that these policies are reasonable, will end all issues with teen pregnancy and abortion and should be viewed favorably by the population at large.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's a Dutch oven, not a French one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You're quite right. You're forgetting one thing, however. Governments excel at banning things. They tend to do poorly at critical thinking tasks, such as "evaluate where the real problem is".
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
This is what happens when society's understanding of responsibility becomes corrupted.
Communist 5th columnists have been working very hard to poison our society with the notion of "group responsibility." Instead of individuals being responsible for their actions alone, secondary and tertiary participants in that action are made to shoulder the blame as well, regardless of whether they were aware of their participation or not.
When Chernobyl blew up, everyone who worked at the plant was punished, even people who were not there at the time and had absolutely no responsibility for the disaster whatsoever. The concept of "group responsibility" was and is a central part of communist ideology. In the Soviet Union it kept everyone paranoid and distrustful, making the society as a whole easier for the thugs at the top to abuse and oppress.
The same insanity has been creeping into our society as well. Suing a store because it sold a perfectly legal device to someone who then used it to commit a crime is absurd and abusive. That case should have been dismissed with prejudice and the lawyer representing the plaintiff censured, if not disbarred.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
EXACTAMUNDO!!!
The only way to solve the problem of irresponsible behavior is to ensure that the full impact of the consequences of that behavior falls upon that person or persons.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Regulations are always supported by insiders as a way to protect themselves from outsiders.
Blanket statements are always wrong. ;-P Seriously, that is not the reasoning for these laws, and there aren't "outs" for big corporations. Home labs only get noticed when the fire department comes. Big labs have scheduled inspections.
Seems to me more likely insurance companies will effectively ban this activity.
What's the premium for insuring your home when your hobby is "explosive experimenter" and how does it change after you screw something minor up and just burn down a wall or something.
It's fun to experiment, but who wants to live next door to the next Marie Curie ?
My impression is that most of the shining examples given were of people doing relatively innocuous things in less litigious times. I'm sure that there are more honest mistakes than malicious intentions among the hobbyists.
There probably is some interesting and worthwhile chemistry to be done with non-exotic ingredients that don't easily go boom or convert to phosgene.
Maybe less fun though...
Nullius in verba
I grew up with a heroin lab on one side and a dog owner on the other. The dog owner was a constant irritation from day one, with the dog barking at all hours and crapping on the lawn. The heroin lab were decent neighbors who didn't really affect us until the night the cops came. Make all the meth/heroin/whatever you want, but keep your blasted dogs away, I say!
Clearly the solution was to give the dog meth/heroin/whatever to stop it barking! Bet you're kicking yourself for not thinking of that now!
(I kid of course!)
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
There's no frontier there, nowhere to go, nothing to do.
If Man were meant to fly, he'd have wings.
The oceans are a vast wasteland, impenetrable beyond a fathom or two.
Man will never walk on the moon.
The horse and buggy is the ultimate in transportation.
If a steam locomotive were to ever achieve over 25 MPH, air friction would cause all aboard to burst into flame.
The sun, moon, and heavens revolve around the Earth.
The Earth is flat.
Remarkable how all these "facts" that "everyone knew" changed as our knowledge and technology improved.
How is it that you have certain knowledge that there's nothing out there and nowhere to go? Thumb a ride on a UFO with some Greys?
Why is it you believe that suddenly Man will gain no more knowledge, technology will no longer advance, Man's abilities will no longer grow, and that Man will discover no more new principals of the universe undiscovered as of yet that combined will allow him to increasingly-efficiently access the wealth of the universe? Or is it that you wish these things stopped happening? Should we all give up this silly quest for knowledge and capabilities and walk away from everything we've built and go back to wearing furs, living in caves, hunting with a club, and dying at 25-30 years of age and wait for the final cataclysm to end the species?
There's a whole universes' worth of real estate, energy, and material waiting for Man to figure a way to belly-up to the buffet. If you'd prefer extinction, please make your selection for yourself alone please.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
There is a simple, logical reason why chemicals are so heavily regulated. It's because too many people have experimented in the past, and that cost often
Question: what does a person do with their failed (or even successful) projects? Well, there's going to be refuse - chemical byproducts - for nearly any reaction, and they're not mostly going to be harmless gases which will float away.
They are, more than likely, going to be water soluble or suspended in water, to one degree or another. Most reasonably advanced science projects will result in waste equivalent to pouring lead powder in someone's water softener.
For instance, let's say someone's experimenting with metals, like maybe stainless steel electrodes in their quest for world conquest or free power, or some such rot. Stainless steel used as electrodes for electrolysis will... get this, result in chromate byproducts. You know, those nasty things which are highly regulated by the EPA, have MSDS with big angry words on them, and generally anger a lot of people when poured down drains due to the impact on plant and animal life. Apparently it kills shit and prevents new shit from growing.
And that's just one idea off the top of my head while this kind of regulation is a "good" thing. There is no liberty for an individual in this; it's selfishness.
There comes a point of diminished return for the society to allow for people to tinker with things they don't quite understand, and to require a high threshold for entry. Encourage that entry, yes; but people are much more likely, at this point, to rediscover a hundred thousand mistakes, and maybe a couple dozen pre-existing discoveries, than to make a genuine discovery using commonly available chemicals. Just not going to happen.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers