The problem with Disney's views is that they're shortsighted- even for Disney. As people have routinely pointed out, Disney has been very aggressive about using public domain as a source for its works- i.e. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc. That means that they could probably profit more than anyone else if the public domain was expanded. Yes, they'd lose the rights to Steamboat Willy, but how much money are they actually making from that? OTOH, Winnie the Pooh would be out of copyright pretty soon, so they wouldn't have to pay royalties to A.A. Milne's heirs for the use of Pooh. How many great movies could be made based on the works of Faulkner, Hemmingway, and the like that are currently being kept under copyright by the term extensions? How great would it be to be able to use Gershwin's music as a background score without having to pay his heirs for it? Why can't Disney see the advantages to them of being able to take advantage of the new works that would be going into the public domain?
Re:Do it yourself decafination for teas
on
Caffeine Vault
·
· Score: 2
The solvent most often used for decaffeination is dichloromethane (also commonly known as methylene chloride). Chlorinated hydrocarbons are basically all known or suspect carcinogens, but apparently this process is still considered acceptable because the decaffeination is performed before roasting and any of the volatile dichloromethane is driven off in the roasting process. Starbucks' literature, at least, claims that dichloromethane is below detectable levels (which are quite low) in decaf coffee beans.
Also FWIW the CO2 used for extraction now is actually supercritical, not liquid. The difference is not terribly important or obvious to the layman, but it does apparently have a pretty dramatic impact on its solvent properties.
If you take a look at the entry at the caffeine vault (or in Merck), it turns out that caffeine's water solubility is very temperature dependent. Merck lists it at 1g / 46 ml at room temperature (which certainly sounds pretty soluble to me) and an astounding 1g / 1.5 ml at boiling. That's awfully damn soluble at the temperature at which most people brew their coffee and tea.
Wonder how the water method for decaffinating coffee works then -- just lots and lots of water?
It's actually pretty noxious- worse IMO than the old method of direct extraction with methylene chloride. I once knew a senior chemist from General Foods, who described the process to me.
Basically what they do is to make a batch of super-strong coffee, so strong in fact that it's saturated in all the water soluble elements of coffee. Then they extract this "water" with methylene chloride. Caffeine is quite unusual in that it's highly soluble in both water (at least hot water) and methylene chloride, so they basically extract only caffeine and closely related compounds that way. Then they take this decaffeinated "water" and use it to extract the coffee beans, presumably at close to boiling. Since it's saturated in everything except for caffeine, it doesn't extract anything from the coffee beans except for caffeine. My source for this says that they recirculate the same batch of "water" through the process for years, which is why I'm not terribly impressed by it.
I'm sure there were many other people named "Publius" at some point in time, but I would venture to say that he is probably the most well-known one, as well as being far older than the others you cite.
The Romans had a very, very limited number of first names, only about 30 in fact. Some of them were stunningly unoriginal; Quintus and Sextus, for instance, literally meant fifth son and sixth son. That means that there were a truly massive number of Romans who were named Publius, like Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. In fact, there was a terribly severe degeneracy of full, proper names among the Romans so that many famous Romans wound up with four or even five names in order to be uniquely identified.
It was very popular in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary period to draw deliberate parallels between the colonies/U.S. and Republican Rome. There was a popular comparison between George Washington and Cincinnatus, for instance. The name Publius was probably chosen by the writers of the Federalist papers because of the obvious Roman connotation and because of the similarity between the name Publius and the idea of being in the public interest.
The people who created the Publius project are the ones who mentioned the use of the name by the writers of the Federalist papers, not the folks at Slashdot. I think that it's a pretty clever idea, as it does a good job of pointing out the need for anonymous publication. After all, it will be very tough for some politician in Washington to come down against an anonymous publishing system that deliberately evokes the Founding Fathers' own belief in the occasional need for anonymity.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with Disney's views is that they're shortsighted- even for Disney. As people have routinely pointed out, Disney has been very aggressive about using public domain as a source for its works- i.e. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc. That means that they could probably profit more than anyone else if the public domain was expanded. Yes, they'd lose the rights to Steamboat Willy, but how much money are they actually making from that? OTOH, Winnie the Pooh would be out of copyright pretty soon, so they wouldn't have to pay royalties to A.A. Milne's heirs for the use of Pooh. How many great movies could be made based on the works of Faulkner, Hemmingway, and the like that are currently being kept under copyright by the term extensions? How great would it be to be able to use Gershwin's music as a background score without having to pay his heirs for it? Why can't Disney see the advantages to them of being able to take advantage of the new works that would be going into the public domain?
No. I think that he means:
(Added text to defeat lameness filter.)
The solvent most often used for decaffeination is dichloromethane (also commonly known as methylene chloride). Chlorinated hydrocarbons are basically all known or suspect carcinogens, but apparently this process is still considered acceptable because the decaffeination is performed before roasting and any of the volatile dichloromethane is driven off in the roasting process. Starbucks' literature, at least, claims that dichloromethane is below detectable levels (which are quite low) in decaf coffee beans.
Also FWIW the CO2 used for extraction now is actually supercritical, not liquid. The difference is not terribly important or obvious to the layman, but it does apparently have a pretty dramatic impact on its solvent properties.
If you take a look at the entry at the caffeine vault (or in Merck), it turns out that caffeine's water solubility is very temperature dependent. Merck lists it at 1g / 46 ml at room temperature (which certainly sounds pretty soluble to me) and an astounding 1g / 1.5 ml at boiling. That's awfully damn soluble at the temperature at which most people brew their coffee and tea.
It's actually pretty noxious- worse IMO than the old method of direct extraction with methylene chloride. I once knew a senior chemist from General Foods, who described the process to me.
Basically what they do is to make a batch of super-strong coffee, so strong in fact that it's saturated in all the water soluble elements of coffee. Then they extract this "water" with methylene chloride. Caffeine is quite unusual in that it's highly soluble in both water (at least hot water) and methylene chloride, so they basically extract only caffeine and closely related compounds that way. Then they take this decaffeinated "water" and use it to extract the coffee beans, presumably at close to boiling. Since it's saturated in everything except for caffeine, it doesn't extract anything from the coffee beans except for caffeine. My source for this says that they recirculate the same batch of "water" through the process for years, which is why I'm not terribly impressed by it.
The Romans had a very, very limited number of first names, only about 30 in fact. Some of them were stunningly unoriginal; Quintus and Sextus, for instance, literally meant fifth son and sixth son. That means that there were a truly massive number of Romans who were named Publius, like Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. In fact, there was a terribly severe degeneracy of full, proper names among the Romans so that many famous Romans wound up with four or even five names in order to be uniquely identified.
It was very popular in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary period to draw deliberate parallels between the colonies/U.S. and Republican Rome. There was a popular comparison between George Washington and Cincinnatus, for instance. The name Publius was probably chosen by the writers of the Federalist papers because of the obvious Roman connotation and because of the similarity between the name Publius and the idea of being in the public interest.
The people who created the Publius project are the ones who mentioned the use of the name by the writers of the Federalist papers, not the folks at Slashdot. I think that it's a pretty clever idea, as it does a good job of pointing out the need for anonymous publication. After all, it will be very tough for some politician in Washington to come down against an anonymous publishing system that deliberately evokes the Founding Fathers' own belief in the occasional need for anonymity.