Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
War on Science
"There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." — Ratty addressing Mole in Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows"
I wasn’t much of a boater when I was a kid. I was a science nerd instead. I’d amend Ratty’s quote to something like:
"There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about with chemistry. Or rockets. Or homemade fireworks.”
Because I did all of that and more when I was a kid. Chemicals, microscopes, telescopes, magnifying glasses, magnets, electrical apparatus, basic electronics — you name it, I was there, dude.
I didn’t die. I completely failed to kill any innocent bystanders. I didn’t terrorize my school. No cats lost their lives. The house didn’t burn down. Hell, my mom barely knew what I was doing, but the bit she did know about, she was PROUD of me.
Here’s the basic formula for gunpowder, as I recall it: Powdered sulfur, powdered charcoal, saltpeter. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t tell you the proportions – hell, that was one of the things I enjoyed finding out! You just try mix after mix and see how it reacts when you light it. I remember that if you substitute potassium nitrate for the sodium nitrate (saltpeter), it burns with a nice red flame. I also remember that if you drop a few drops of glycerin onto crystals of potassium permanganate, it will spontaneously catch fire, burning with a weird purple flame and giving off incredibly dense brown smoke.
But kids today can’t do such things. Read the Memepunks post on America's War on Science to find out why.
In Texas, you need to register the purchase of Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers. The same state where I do not have to register a handgun, forces me to register a glass beaker. In Portland, Oregon, even pH strips are suspect.
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Since the beginnings of the war on terror, the government has ridiculously claimed that model rockets could be used to shoot down commercial aircraft. Now all rocket engines above a certain size and thrust limit require fingerprinting, background checks and waving of your search and seizure rights! Said engines often require a Low Explosive Usage Permit to launch or take them across state lines. And all of these paranoid laws and regulations on chemistry, rocketry, and lab ware are not being done in ignorance. The powers that be are aware of the effect legislation is having on budding scientists and hobby enthusiasts. Pentagon and Justice Department consultant, professor James Tour said, “The fact that there are amateurs and retired professors out there who need access to these chemicals is a valid problem, but there aren’t many of those guys weighed against the possible dangers.”
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There’s this thing I’ve been hearing in the past few years as justification for traffic checkpoints, home searches, wire-tapping, all sorts of warrantless government intrusions and beefed-up security.
If you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t be afraid of the law.
Wha—?
It seems to make enormous sense to conservatives. But it’s one of the most anti-American things I can imagine anyone saying. I can’t figure out how you can actually grow up in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and not understand what it actually means.
What it means, to the hundreds of millions of Americans who are NOT committing heinous crimes, is this:
“It doesn’t matter if you’re honest, honorable, decent, good-willed and innocent. The cops should have the right to treat you exactly like the ratbags who DO commit the crimes. As long as criminals and terrorists exist anywhere in the world, government officials should be able to treat you as potential criminals and terrorists.”
Part of the package is this sort of unspoken sideband transmission that crops up in this restriction on chemistry sets, chemicals, lab equipment, all sorts of things I had access to when I was a kid: “Please excuse the sharp limits placed on your freedoms during the current emergency. Oh, and don’t hold your breath waiting to get them back.”
I kid you not, we have a White House – and a Congress, and all too many state houses – filled with fascist sonsabitches who would be perfectly at ease in Soviet-era Russia. Put Karl Rove or Dick Cheney in thick Russian coats and furry hats and their evil faces would vanish into a vintage picture of the Politburo like a couple of blowflies on a bull’s ass. They’d be HOME.
This White House is not only shitting on U.S. soldiers currently in Iraq. By vanishing civil liberties in every area of American life, it's shitting on heroes from the Revolutionary War onward — the men and women who gave their lives so we could have these freedoms to being with.
And that continues to piss me off.
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My Brother's discarded chemistry set
For some reason, many of my relatives thought that my younger brother was a budding nerd. He received 2 different chemistry sets, an archeology kit, a Fisher Price microscope and "micro-explorer" kit, and multiple sets of Domino Rally that he never played with. I did. I loved them all and I'll be very upset if this situation isn't fixed by the time my kids are old enough for their own chemistry sets. I might just have to bring them into work with me instead.
Mandy U
Part of a recent history
I hate to tell you this, Hank (heck I hate to tell me this, but I got the message a long time ago), but this isn't a Bush administration thing. This is something that's been creeping slowly for a while now.
I was lucky enough to go to a private school for the first six grades of my life. In sixth grade our teacher brought in a scientist who then showed us how to make a hydrogen bomb, then let us explode the thing in school. The hydrogen gas was in an ordinary baloon, so as you can no doubt imagine it caused a nifty bang and fireball in the middle of the classroom, but no actual damage. Although that school was a private school, the building was old and we didn't have a separate science room in which to do experiments, still our teachers made sure that we at least got exposure to science that made it interesting (I never liked manmade craft though, I was always more into natural sciences). When I got to 7th grade I moved to a public high school I half expected to be behind on science only to find out I was at roughly the same level as everybody else (and yet they'd never made a hydrogen bomb in class), in fact I quickly found out that although my high school science classes did do some science experiments it was never anything terribly dangerous. Unlike me their teachers didn't take them out to relatively wild areas, unlike me their parents were the typical "if it's microscopic it's bad for you" mindset (whereas mine taught me that some bacteria is beneficial to the human body). In her higher education experience my mom's teacher taught them how to make a nuclear bomb, my high school was afraid to give us anything more dangerous than Silver Nitrate or the Baking soda + vinnegar = fun reaction. We did get more tame color change reactions, and my genetics teacher let us handle some truely fascinating slime as part of a demonstration that life and nonlife are not always as easy to tell appart as we might think. I loved growing crystals as a kid, but it's becoming harder to find crystal growing kit.
Going outside into wild areas has more benefits than Jim's article mentioned. One of the things that going into wild country does is show the kid that nature really is powerful, and not something you can just control with a few bits of technology. Scouts and going out into a well manicured lawn/garden/playground don't do that though, in fact a study showed that kids whose only natural experience is in these settings are no more likely to care about the environment than kids who didn't have outdoor time, and were more likely to think that nature was something that they could ultimately bend to their will. That leads to millions-billions of dollars in money wasted trying to keep beachfront property from falling into the ocean, trying to rebuild in highly risky areas. Still, that article is quite interesting and might help to explain why childhood mental problems seem to be on the rise.
Umm
Well the theory is simple enough. Slam two subcritical masses of highly enriched Uranium-235 together at high speed (I think this is the simplest way, Plutonium weapons are more complex), but even assuming you have those on hand, making a working weapon involves a lot of specialized explosives and electronics knowledge so I am thinking that generally only those who are actually involved in the production of these weapons really know how to make them.
Just more of the same...
As best I can tell, SOP for ShrubCo is to destroy anything that could possibly tell them "no". And those pesky natural laws don't show any respect for authority at all....
Well said. It kind of makes
Well said. It kind of makes me wonder why I just spent five years in the Marines. I did it for this?
"Papers, please."
While this is actually a deeper problem than just the current administration (the whole mindset of "protecting the children" has led to incredible changes across the spectrum in the last couple of decades), there is little doubt that the Bush White House has seized upon the opportunity presented by the current War on Terror to dramatically increase government control.
Did you see the news item about the TSA and the Sippy Cup Terrorist this week? Or how about the revelations that the FBI used thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - of 'National Security Letters' inappropriately over the last couple of years to spy on average Americans without the slightest hint of probable cause? And here in the next week or so I have to go in to get my driver's license renewed and I need not just proof that I can legally drive a car, but my Passport, proof of my SSN, and either my Voter ID card or a recent utility bill. My expired driver's license of five years isn't sufficient proof any longer that I've actually, you know, been here that long.
Combine all this with the insanity of the "War on Drugs" which encourage paramilitary operations by your local police department, and you can make a fair case that we're already living in Police State Lite, with all the elements either in place or being put into place to allow for the complete implementation of something resembling martial law. I'm not paranoid, and I don't hear voices talking to me through the fillings in my teeth - but I am deeply disturbed by what I see.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Sounds to me...
...like you don't have the volume turned up high enough Jim.
Dirk would say...
...that I need an upgrade if I expect to get quality sound from my fillings. ;)
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Features
Must be Japanese. That sounds like a wonderful feature I don't have access to right now. Although, I see dollar signs in your future if you can get a patent.
Shadowfall
I was reading a book on islamic countries and what they did when their societies were stressed with things like unemployment and corruption. Generally what they did was to crack down on those with little to no political power i.e. institute more draconian laws against women. The torch-bearing mob here cracks down on things like science. 'Faith' is some sort of virtue, but 'knowledge' is to be shat upon, especially scientific knowledge (unless it leads directly to better weapons, or supports the controlling party's agenda).
When I hear stories like this or see reports of violence in the middle east and murders elsewhere I always think to myself 'This is just the beginning.' In the coming years there will be more and more people and thus more competition for limited resources like arable land and fresh water i.e. there will be more stress and as we know stress, violence and repression walk hand in hand.
More info on Prof. Tour, who
More info on Prof. Tour, who has some issues with evolution:
http://www.jmtour.com/?page_id=27
Brain ... On ... Fire ...
I posted this on StupidEvilBastard.com, but it's appropriate here as well: http://www.smugbaldy.com/?p=74. In order to placate the religious right, the republican party has become pretty anti-intellectual and anti-science in recent years. I think it's interesting that the anti-science bent goes so far beyond simply denying the facts of evolution, or making stupid claims like abortion causes cancer, but now it's getting to the point at which we have to stash our beakers? Mr. Wizard would rightly roll over in his grave.
Does he really think there
Does he really think there is an "evolution vs. creation" debate? There is no debate.
Also, since when did evolution become a "doctrine"? It's just science, that's all.
Meh. Why do I bother? Sorry Hank if this turns the thread into an evolution vs. creation "debate."
Wha....?
That was excruciating.
I can't figure out if this is spam, or just a really clueless anonymous commenter.
Whew!
Good lord, that was dull as hell. I couldn't get through it.
And what does it have to do with this post?