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Anti-Terrorism and the Death of the Chemistry Set
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:06 PM
from the the-dark-side-of-phenolphthalein dept.
from the the-dark-side-of-phenolphthalein dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A recent unfortunate casualty of anti-terrorism laws is the home chemistry set. Once deemed the gift that saved Christmas, most Slashdotters probably remember early childhood experimentation with one of the many pre-packaged chemistry sets that were on the market. Unfortunately the FBI has decided that home chemistry sets are a threat to national security and they are rapidly disappearing from the market entirely. Those that remain are shallow boring versions of the old kits."
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Firehose:Anti-Terrorism and the Death of the Chemistry Set by Anonymous Coward
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just taking care to take care. (Score:5, Interesting)
You do know the government is just trying to take care of us, right? Heck, I got the warm fuzzy long ago when Claritin-D, technically an OTC drug would only be sold from behind TC, and then only if you present picture identification, and even then you could only purchase enough to take one a day for ten days! Of course, if it isn't in stock when you want to purchase, you're out of luck... but you're being taken care of. (If you didn't know, the government was/is protecting us from the proliferation of meth labs with this inane process... not that I've noticed much evidence meth labs have disappeared. I have been a lot more congested though.)
Surprised chemistry sets didn't go this route long ago, what with their potential to put together explosives approaching that of a couple firecrackers combined! Warm fuzzies.
I hate to rant about good intentions, but these don't even smell like good intentions any more. Terrorists couldn't care less about chemistry sets.
Re:just taking care to take care. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:just taking care to take care. (Score:5, Insightful)
What goes around, comes around.
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Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:just taking care to take care. (Score:5, Insightful)
They care that they aren't offered and they care that people are pissed about it. They care about kids having less and less of a chance to educate themselves and they care that kids curiosity isn't being fulfilled nearly as much. They definitely care. They care that the US is becoming a more and more demoralized nation and the educated are having to fight less and less fights that matter and about more and more like this. They care that the people that think are being distracted and rendered useless. Because with them out of way, and with the idiots that are in power today, the current situation will favour them more and more and...
Take care of the thinkers of tomorrow, take care of the thinkers of today and take care that the terrorists are very very happy about this.
Parent
Re:just taking care to take care. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, you wanted to be a mechanic, no home economics for you. Or, oh... too bad you selected accountant, now you can't get that particle physics minor you so badly wanted.
Today's government wants all knowledge compartmentalized so that no one, and I mean no one, outside of the government can get the clear picture of what's going on.
Want to get into a hobby? It had better be along the lines of what you went to college for, otherwise they'll start to watch you on suspicion of being a terrorist. Showing an interest in an activity outside of your major, oooh - watchout, you've made the FBI's watch list again.
Jack of all trades are a dying breed. Specialization guarantees that the government is the only entity that really knows what's going on, just the way they want it to be.
Just think, if the government had started down this path 20 years ago, most of us would be specialists who grunt when someone talks about something that we didn't go to school for. Or worse yet, we'd call the cops if someone tried to teach us something outside of our specialty.
This is how periods of history like the dark ages start. By restricting knowledge so that the masses are not allowed to be fully educated, you guarantee that knowledge will begin to stagnate (only when certain types of knowledge intermingle with others are truly radical discoveries usually possible), and eventually disappear, sometimes forever.
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Re:just taking care to take care. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:just taking care to take care. (Score:5, Insightful)
The pharmacist asked for a CA driver's license. He said he doesn't drive anymore but has his VA card. She wouldn't sell it to him. Said she had to put the CA driver's license number in the database. No other's allowed.
A veteran of WWII or perhaps Korea couldn't buy a fucking harmless medication because he doesn't have the right ID? I couldn't fucking believe it... Was he going to go back to the old-folks home and set up a meth lab with a box of Claritin? Jebus fucking H goddamn shit.
(This country disgusts me more and more. We should storm something in Guy Faulke's masks. )
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Re:just taking care to take care. (Score:5, Interesting)
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
"Doctors have been caught using poisons, and those who falsely assume the name of philosopher have occasionally been detected in the gravest crimes. Let us give up eating, it often makes us ill; let us never go inside houses, for sometimes they collapse on their occupants; let never a sword be forged for a soldier, since it might be used by a robber." - ancient Roman educator Marcus Fabius Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, II, xvi
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Re:just taking care to take care. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to rant about good intentions, but these don't even smell like good intentions any more. Terrorists couldn't care less about chemistry sets.
Right! Terrorists couldn't care less about chemistry sets. The Feds know this. First, chemistry sets were not banned, they were neutered. They were neutered long before 9-11. It has nothing to do with terrorism. It has everything to do with liability.
I understand that it's cool to bash the president and blame Bush for everything. However, this is not one of those cases. This isn't Bush's fault. If anything, it's John Edwards, or at least lawyers. Chemistry sets are hard to find for the same reason that slingshots are hard to find, because they can be dangerous in the wrong hands, kid's hands.
The people that are banning "dangerous" chemicals in chemical sets are the same people that forced MacDonald's to stop asking you if you wanted it "super sized", and the same people that are trying to ban you from smoking in a bar, or your car, and in your home, and outside... and so on. It's the same people who make planters put a label on a bag of peanuts that says, "danger, contains peanuts". It's the people that mandate seat belts and motorcycle helmets. These people are not conservatives (although there are some conservative nannies that say I can't drink beer in a bar after 2:00am). Nope! These are the same people that say things like "We are going to take things away from you for the common good".
Googling "nanny state chemistry set" took me to this [nytimes.com] article from the NY times. It's in response to an op-ed piece about the removal of chemistry sets. The article date, May 13, 1999. About 2.25 years BEFORE 9-11 and BEFORE the War on Terror. So, please, stop blaming this on Bush or the War On Terror. This was happening long before any of that!
From TFA:
Sorry, but TFA is just plain wrong.
Parent
options (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if this might signal an opportunity for some entrepeneur to develop a virtual chem lab. It's not exactly the same, but at least it would give kids an opportunity to learn and explore. It could also offer features you wont find in any real chemistry set. Nice graphics showing what is going on on a much lower level. A virtual professor to help out and explain. Tools and materials that are too expensive or that really would be too dangerous.
virtual chem lab (Score:5, Insightful)
Until you burn your fingers on a hot beaker, or smell the reults of your last failed ( or successful ) experiment that catches on fire or cracks the bottom out of your flask, you never really learn. Its all theory without that sort of 'real' experience..
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Re:virtual chem lab (Score:5, Insightful)
The excuse that 'Terrorists' use the chem sets for bombs and chemical warfare is ridiculous. If they are used for malicious purpose, it's more likely from your average neighbourhood punk kid making a smoke bomb or something similar. People wanting to cause REAL harm will be busy getting Ammonium Nitrate (fertilier) and Diesel (makeshift ANFO, a powerful explosive), or gunpowder, or Javex and Drano (cheap and easy way to get mustard gas) and causing all sorts of deadly havoc that way. one must wonder if DHS took the anarchist's cookbook a little too seriously..maybe next week, they'll be banning 3.25" floppies because you can embed match heads in them to cook floppy drives..
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Re:options (Score:5, Insightful)
No offense, but that's pretty lame. Chemistry sets are fun because they're hand on.
This is just getting ridiculous. I can go down the block and fill my car with 30 gallons of highly flamable/explosive gasoline, but chemistry sets are off limits because they contain a few ounces of potentially dangerous chemicals? Our government is officially retarded.
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Re:options (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is the problem. It's not terrorism that is causing these things to disappear. It's the fact that we've become a nanny state, and it's not conservatives that are the cause! You can't get toys for your kids that may have pointed edge. You can't get toys for your kids that may fit down a wind pipe or break off into sharp pieces. This isn't because of GW Bush, it's because of lawyers. Any time a kid gets hurt by a toy, the company gets sued into oblivion, whether it was the company's fault or not! It becomes cheaper to settle out of court for $100,000 than it does not fight it out.
Chemistry sets are hard to find for the same reason that sling shots are hard to find. It's not because they present a terrorism threat, it's because they are dangerous. The first time some kid mixes something that he wasn't supposed to makes an explosive, corrosive mixture that "puts an eye out", the company that made that kit gets sued. If it were about terror, this would be an article about how hard it is to find good pool chemicals!
It's the same nannies that want to tell you that you can't smoke in your house, or you can't have a big mac or supersize your fries. These people don't usually tend to be conservatives. It's happens to be the people that say things like, "we are going to take things away from you for the common good."
Parent
Then there's the Internet (Score:5, Informative)
Chemistry (Score:5, Interesting)
What was interesting about the Wired Science show was that show bemoaned the fact that chemistry sets are watered down but the show had a chemist talk about how dangerous using nonlaboratory conditions to run one of the "old school" experiments were.
The irony of it was in this show that was going on about "dangerous" chemicals was that "dangerous" chemical was actually NI3 one of the standard things kids used to make all the time.
On a personal note, I was one of those kids who was a total pyromaniac in high school / middle school, we eventually grew out of it of course, but we pretty much made everything one could easily get a hold of and then some. All of this was done in using "household" chemicals (and some ordering from chemical supply companies). The practical upshot of being a complete pyromaniac in was I ended up getting my undergraduate degree in chemistry/CS and getting a Ph.D. in chemistry and now am a faculty member (in physics randomly enough). At the end of the day it was "blowing stuff up" that made science cool, perhaps a little dangerous, perhaps even foolhardy but the fact that you could do so much w/ everyday chemicals sparked that interest in science, atoms and plain old tinkering
Amateur Rocketry RIP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Amateur Rocketry RIP (Score:5, Informative)
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Not a terribly new issue... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, the decline in hobby-level chemistry sets, as I mentioned before, began with the rise in the "new American Dream." You know, the one where you sue somebody for a million dollars. Liability for selling chemistry sets is, without a doubt, astronomical in these days of knee-jerk litigation... Nobody in their right mind would sell something to children that they could easily kill or wound themselves with, quite easily...
From my own personal history, when I had a chemistry set as a child, it came with glass tubing and an alcohol burner. You used it to heat the tubing and bend it into shapes to connect beakers and what have you together... Well, not being old enough to know better, and not patient enough to wait for the tubing to cool down on its own after bending it, I decided it might be best to cool it off in some water. I consider it fortunate I didn't lose an eye when the glass exploded. And that didn't involve any chemicals... Not that the stuff they provided was terribly dangerous, but it's dangerous enough that it's simply not a viable business anymore, is my point...
Tinkertoys Next? (Score:5, Funny)
They burn if ignited.
They can cause physical injury if someone is stabbed with one, or has a hub thrown at them from close range.
They can be assembled into a gun that might look too realistic if viewed under poor conditions.
Got to get rid of this stuff now. Leave the kids ignorant of any toys that might actually teach them critical thinking by doing.
The culture of fear isn't only in chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure if this is accurate... (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the issue is more of a "legal" than "security" issue. I think the high risk of lawsuits is what's killing these kits. In the old days, if you let your kids be unsupervized and they started eating the chemicals - you were considered a bad parent with a stupid kid. Now days, parents tell the kids to eat the chemicals in hopes of a winning lawsuit so they don't have to work anymore.
How many classic toys have gone the way of the dino because of our stupid frivolous legal system and lack of responsibility culture. I mean, Burger King/McDonald's (one of the two) had these flying princesses. They spin, their wings fly out and they whirl into the sky like helicopters. "Recalled and banned!" Why? Because they're uber dangerous. The fly toy might just land on the child's head. We can't have that. (Not like a baseball isn't a 100x more deadly - but we're not going to ban those.)
Bah...this plan deserves to be turned into an intergalactic entranceway.
Re:When's it going to stop? (Score:5, Funny)
Patience, patience. We're getting there!
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Re:all the fun stuff (Score:5, Informative)
Well... no, there isn't really. A good friend of mine who IS a rocket scientist (aerospace engineer, anyway) is a long-time rocket hobbyist and is now tinkering with propulsion systems in his garage. Don't get him started on ordering hobby rocket engines above a certain size, any kind of fuel ingredients, and even certain parts from the States over the last couple of years (we're in Canada, and apparently you can't find a lot of this stuff locally to start with).
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