Home Chemistry An Endangered Hobby in U.S. 627
Disoculated writes "Wired is running an article entitled "Don't Try This at Home" discussing how that increasing paranoia about terrorism and liability is making it nearly impossible to become involved in any chemistry related hobby in the United States. Sure, the innovative will try to work around these types of limitations, but are we teaching our kids to be afraid of science?"
great article (Score:3, Funny)
A great new age (Score:3, Insightful)
Shit...
Re:A great new age (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:great article (Score:2)
Re:great article (Score:3, Funny)
Something tells me the little old lady next door doesn't need anything titrated.
Re:When home chemistry is outlawed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is crazy, of course, because corporations are bound by design to be interested only in developments with visible returns on investment and restricted only by the ethical constraints that may get said corporation sued. There's no interest in investigating random or merely 'interesting' things that can produce the really interesting and exciting diamonds in the rough of unexpected discovery.
The amount of resources to do research can be remarkably small. The tools to run a small bacterial lab can be aquired for a few thousand dollars, and a chemical lab costs about the same (used centrifuge, a bunch of glassware, thermometers, agitators, water baths, etc). Sure you won't be doing DNA sequencing, but you can maybe make your own superglue or discover a bacterium that has interesting soil-fixing properties. The tools that Pastuer used won't cost you very much in today's market. But you'll never be able to get insurance or convince your local newspaper that you're legit because you don't have a quarterly report.
Are we willing to trust all our future scientific advances to the same people that want to put DRM in movies?
This is about illegal explosives, really (Score:5, Informative)
The lawyers at the CPSC tell us that by stopping sales of some chemicals, they believe they will stop the illicit "M-80" trade. We in the pyrotechnics hobby disagree.
For those that don't know: There is a "booming" business in making and selling illegal salutes. Sales of large (greater than 50 mg) salutes (the proper name for a noisemaking device which functions by the deflagration or detonation of flash powder) to the general public has been illegal since 1966. BATFE is the organization that sees to that enforcement. CPSC is not charged with that duty; they see mainly to products that are intended to be sold to consumers. However, the Federal Hazardous Substance Act grants them authority to regulate hazardous substances in certain limited situations. The CPSC is attempting to stretch their FHSA authority to cover the chemicals used in the manufacture of salutes. Currently, this is mostly finely divided metals (aluminum, magnesium, and "magnalium"; Al-Mg alloys) and potassium perchlorate, but there are other oxidizers that occur in some flash formulae.
CPSC has a persuasive powerpoint deck that shows lots of nasty injuries from illegal explosives. None of us, least of all the pyro hobbyists, want to have people lose fingers, hands, eyes, or lives over some pyro; we agree on that. However, we in the pyro community believe that hobbyist suppliers of pyro chemcicals aren't the source of the chems used in illicit trade; those come from traditional chemical supply houses, mostly.
Firefox Enterprises is currently in litigation with the CPSC over this. Go to their website http://www.firefox-fx.com/ [firefox-fx.com] and click on the CPSC link for details. Skylighter, my local supplier http://www.skylighter.com/ [skylighter.com] has been visited by the CPSC, but so far he (Harry Gilliam, proprietor) hasn't been enjoined to stop sales. He has very tightly restricted sales of salute-making chemicals however; so maybe that will hold the dogs at bay for the moment.
In the US, it is legal, at the federal level, to make your own fireworks without a license. State and local laws may indeed restrict you, but the feds (BATFE) allow it. We in the hobbyist pyro community would like to see that continue. Help us. Join the fireworks alliance, at no cost. http://www.fireworksalliance.org/ [fireworksalliance.org] Read the information that Dave, Tom, and John put together there, and agitate your legislators. Buy something from one of the vendors above; there is a surcharge that goes to the CPSC defense fund. Donate directly to the fireworks foundation: http://www.fireworksfoundation.org/ [fireworksfoundation.org].
To help out and enjoy some great fireworks at club-sponsored events, Join the Pyrotechnics Guild International: http://www.pgi.org/membership.aspx [pgi.org]. Join a local (or distant; some of our members are states away) pyro club: http://www.pgi.org/fireworks-clubs.aspx [pgi.org] My club is The Crackerjacks http://www.crackerjacks.org/ [crackerjacks.org]; but join any you like. We'd be happy to teach you how to safely construct individual fireworks, how to choreograph a disply, or just how to make your backyard fuse-lighting a better experience.
Novapyro
Re:great article (Score:2, Informative)
Re:great article (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:great article (Score:5, Insightful)
There are so many laws that everyone violates some of them. Most houses have chemicals that could be used in the production of meth or pipe bombs. If the police want to go after you, they can find something. If the DA wants to prosecute you, he just needs to give a subset of the available facts and tell a story that compels a jury to find you guilty. The defense has to explain why those facts are being used in a misleading way and tell a better story to get off.
Amateur chemists need to understand that there is some potential risk in what they do. However, that is probably true of most hobbies. Nothing is completely safe. If you give someone a reason to investigate you, or just have bad luck, you'll have to justify your actions to someone who only cares about getting another prosecution, regardless of whether or not justice is served. The only way to avoid that is to do nothing and wait to die. Actually, that's would probably be suspect too. The chances of getting hauled off to a gulag are pretty small for people who aren't doing anything wrong. Like with all things in life, just do what you're going to do and hope the odds work in your favor.
What if the Government doesn't like you? (Score:3, Insightful)
good morning ! (Score:3, Informative)
Suddenly police officers and men in camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. "Come out with your hands up immediately, Miss White!" one of them yelled through a megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear. Recalling that June morning in 2003, Lazar says, "If they were expecting to find Osama bin Laden, they brought along enough guys."
The target of this operation, which involved more than two dozen police officers and federal agents, was not an international terrorist ring but the couple's home business, United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, a mail-order outfit that serves amateur scientists, students, teachers, and law enforcement professionals.
Re:good morning ! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a pity that we are in a terrorism dark age. I remember I cut my teeth in science doing somewhat explosive experiments. I don't think I would have had such an inquisitive mind had my only science been dropping a basketball and a baseball at the same time to see which falls first.
Re:good morning ! (Score:5, Insightful)
I presume you're American? In that case, your neighbour has access to firearms. If he wants to kill you, he'll do it with a gun, not with OMG TEH LASERS!!!
I suspect that if you wanted to kill somebody with the uranium sold here, your best bet would be to bludgeon them to death with it; it's heavy stuff, uranium. Getting a critical reaction going is difficult, and I think somebody would notice if your neighbour started running a centrifuge farm or a bunch of calutrons to enrich his uranium. So would the power company, for that matter; they already spy on their customers to catch people running hydroponics farms, as part of the War On Some Drugs...
Hydroponics and Grow Lights (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wisdom follows, pay attention (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:good morning ! (Score:5, Insightful)
You and every other coward who values false security over liberty.
Congratulations, you and your ilk are killing America.
Re:good morning ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Even more importantly, the use and development of "grey matter".
What's happening to our societies? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's almost funny, reading this article and the comments today. Here in the UK, the media are making a big thing about knife crime just now, after a couple of high-profile stabbings. The comments in the forums on places like BBC News are full of people saying we should raise jail sentences for carrying/using/killing with a knife (what, again?) and other similar knee-jerk reactions. Those suggesting looking at why we have such a problem (and indeed whether we really do or it's just media hype) make up a small minority of those posting comments, as do those suggesting that there may be a better answer and proposing a response other than much harsher penalties for those caught in posession of or using a knife.
I see clear parallels there with the discussions about home chemistry, and for that matter with discussions about writing computer programs for various purposes often mentioned in these parts.
It's sad. We used to tell kids about being responsible, teaching them that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, and disciplining those who abused their freedoms at others' expense. Then we'd know that most people would grow up to be responsible adults, and focus on those that weren't. These days, it's more about telling people they can't do something in the first place, and imposing draconian penalties if they even think about trying.
We never used to deny people opportunities to learn about things and enjoy them for their own sake, just because they had some small potential for abuse. I remember being inspired at around the age of 14 by a public presentation at a local university, explaining how fireworks were made. I went along with my dad - a scientist himself by trade - and he found it interesting as well. I went on to study chemistry for several years.
But today, that sort of thing is probably frowned upon. I drive a car that can go very fast, so obviously I'm a dangerous driver and need five speed cameras to check up on me on the way to work. (And yet friends who ride with me often describe me as one of the safest drivers they know, and I've never been so much as pulled over by a police car in over a decade of driving.) I've spent much of my life studying various martial arts, and lost count of how many ways I know to seriously injure or kill someone, so perhaps I should go register myself as a lethal weapon. (And yet the last involvement I had with a mugging was giving first aid to the victim afterwards - something I'm also trained to do.) Post-Dunblane, a friend of mine who used to shoot for sport had to give up his Olympic-style pistols and his hobby. (And yet, he never fired a gun outside a supervised range in his life, while gun crime in general has gone up since the ban.) You get the idea.
What happened to everyone having freedoms and taking personal responsibility for exercising them in an ethical way? I'm not sure whether it's big brother, the nanny state, or some bastard child of both, but whatever it is, I liked society better the old way.
Re:good morning ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup - Even (gasp!) bought stuff from them.
Radioactive isotopes, burning lasers, uranium, heavy water.... is this what you expect high school science teachers are buying, and Mom and Dad put in little Timmy's chemistry set?
Little Timmy can't walk into a liquor store and buy a bottle of Absolut and a carton of Camels, either. Your point?
None of the things sold by UN's site violate federal laws, or most state laws (most importantly, not my state and not their state, the
Management Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Management Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Management Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
don't worry about China becoming a competitor - we're already getting them to sign up to DRM, and once the number of lawyers there achieves critical mass, their society will also stagnate due to massively overburdening corporations and governments with beaurocracy.
you see, you have to remember: the purpose of management, marketing, lawyers and government is not to serve, but to take control and expand... it's only when there's just one person left in the world doing real work and everyone else is either managing him/her or duking it out in court over whether that person is licensed to do the work, that we'll all wonder where it went wrong!
Re:Management Culture (Score:4, Funny)
So you're saying that they'll finally throw off the yoke of western cultural dominance and return to the way they were before Europeans arrived and screwed up their country? (Apologies to Chinese readers, but I couldn't resist.)
Re:Management Culture (Score:4, Insightful)
not quite - instead of the gov't controlling everything, it will be corporations & their lawyers - so it will all be possible in the name of free enterprise + democracy rather than simply oppressive despotic rulers. However, I think despotic governments might be preferable to the RIAA/MPAA because at least nearly everyone is treated equally as mere peons.
Re:Management Culture (Score:3, Funny)
now I know: Managing Lawsuits!
Re:Management Culture (Score:3)
I read this comment and was about to move on thinking, meh slashdot. But really this is insulting to scientists and ppl who love science, I seperate the two cause some scientists don't actually love science.
I'd like to believe Science exists b/c a society is curious about the unknown, not cause they want a bigger bang. I think our society has become more cautious and lost that pioneering edge. T
Re:Management Culture (Score:3)
As you pointed out the govt. is bent on eliminating percieved threats, I'm not sure if its doing it for the citizenry or for itself.
Re:Management Culture (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps not... All your base allready are belong to them.
You know that when you see "Made in China" on your typical US product. And they're putting Gremlins in those products, you know.
That's why US government don't want Lenovo computers. They know that perfectly, but they're hiding the existence of Gremlins to the general public. I fear there's a bigger conspiracy than Roswell here...
Re:Management Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not dispute your conclusion (that the quality of education has been in decline), but this particular statement is false. The dollar figures for education have been rising every year. Despite how it is construed, getting a 15% increase instead of a 20% increase is not a budget cut when student enrollment remains flat (as it has for many years).
I would argue instead that the money is simply misspent. When I was in K-12, the focus was on doing math problems, building vocabulary, and learning science and history. In other words, education. Now the focus is on shiny new buildings, universal Internet connectivity, self-esteem, and zero tolerance rules. When your main concern is that there is a "counselor" for every 3 students, and you're dumping real science education in favor of the FSM, you're very, very likely to produce the fat, contented, ignorant kids we have today.
A money shortage is definitely not the problem here.
Re:Management Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of what you personally could do for your own child for $10,000 a year. I'm certain you could find a way to give him or her a quality education for that much money. Yet somehow, the public school system can't seem to make that happen. According to them, they need still more money. It's crazy.
But the best part is, we are not going to fix it. We're not. Because we don't want to. If I even say the word voucher, some large portion of the people viewing this post will immediately stop reading. They don't even want to try. The only thing they are willing to try is "let's give the schools more money." Yeah, let's keep doing that year after year and see if anything changes. Ten years from now, we'll have this discussion again. The average cost per student will be $50,000 a year, and I'll ask, "what should we do to fix this" and the answer will be, "we have to give the schools more money omg!!"
Re:Management Culture (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe that is a factor. The larger factors are 1) Generally folks in college want to be in college. If a person doens't like school, he generally won't enroll in college, or will get himself flunked out quickly. 2) With college, it is your money, coming out of your pocket in many cases. My experience hass been that students who are paying their own way outperform (as a whole) over those who have mommy and daddy paying their way (as a whole). Competition, in my mind, is a tetrary reason for colleges getting a bigger bang for the buck.
Re:Management Culture (Score:3, Informative)
A more realistic comparison to public school: 20 kids in a class = $200,000 a year. You could easily rent a building, hire a custodial staff, buy all the books and other materials, and still have more than 100k left over to pay the teacher.
For high-school, you need a history teacher, a science teacher, etc. But there are still at least 20 kids per teacher, so the ratios still hold up.
I stand by my statement. It sh
Re:Management Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
Option A, we send the 100 kids to school A. 50 of them will learn to read. 50 of them will not.
Option B, we send the 100 kids to school B. 75 of them will learn to read. 25 of them will not. All 100 of them will learn the four tenets of Buddhism [wikipedia.org].
So, which school do you send them to? What is better for them? If you reject option B out of hand, you strike me as ve
new chemistry (Score:5, Funny)
Laziness & the Government (Score:5, Insightful)
The liabilities incurred might come from local law enforcement if they think you're setting up a meth lab or it might even be your neighbor's kid comes over and breaths in some fumes that his asthma doesn't handle so well.
A lot of the scenarios I'm thinking of involve the chemical and physical sciences. I don't think that being proficient in computer sciences will raise any government eyebrows unless you're doing something truly illegal. In the end, I think we're mostly seeing a decline in getting-your-hands-dirty simply due to the fact that it's a mess & Americans are pretty lazy. I personally work a lot and when I get home, I'm not in the mood to set up a particle accelerator. I think that the armchair sciences like computers, political, economic, statistics, mathematics, etc. will probably be the focus of new hobbiests.
From the Wired article: Great, just one more federal agency for me to fear/hate. You just made the list, CPSC!
As for the USAToday article entitled U.S. could fall behind in global 'brain race', I think that's crap. I'll quote a few parts of it and add my commentary: One word, "population." How about you translate those figures into engineers graduated per capita? China = 500,000:1,306,313,812. India = 200,000:1,080,264,388. United States = 70,000:295,734,134. That's roughly 1:2612 for China, 1:5401 for India and 1:4224 for the United States. Those numbers aren't bad at all, especially if you took other countries. Now, if you want to argue about the rigor of the courses, I'd say that varies from place to place. Although this looks bad economically, I don't see how this relates to the topic at hand. In no way can you measure a country's education and gifted students.
There was very little for me to agree with in this article.
Not that easy (Score:5, Insightful)
With the paranoia about evil hackers, and encryption having been already used as "proof of criminal intent" to convict someone, you never know how long that'll last.
And witch hunts for computer geeks have already happened, e.g., in the wake of Columbine and the like. Suddenly every introverted nerd in some schools, or god forbid self-confessed computer gamer, was dragged before the principal or in some cases before the police. I knew someone from the USA who allegedly had major problems getting hired in his home town, and thus had to move, because that stigma never quite went away. Once he had been labelled as probably the next guy who'll shoot the school up, that small town never let go of that notion.
And let's not forget that witch hunts usually target the unpopular members of the community, rather than the real witches/terrorists/etc. I'd wager that out of the about 2 million victims of the inquisition, at least a million were burned just because they were the unsocial ones that didn't fit the group. Or worse yet, told some community leader to fuck off.
Nerds can make really unpopular neighbours. They're the ones who'd rather sit at a computer and do god knows what nefarious things than take part in the community gossip games. Even if not nefarious, at least they're "addicts" or whatever veiled insult.
So if you think the next witch hunt can't target IT nerds, think again.
Re:Laziness & the Government (Score:2)
personally, I would say that the CPSC is well outside it's jurisdiction...
Re:Laziness & the Government (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Laziness & the Government (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking as a chemist... (Score:3, Insightful)
The submission asks whether people are afraid of science. The question should be, are people afraid to use caustic, explosive, and potentially fatal chemicals without safety procedures or training? I sure hope the answer is yes, and I would consider that a good thing.
Re:Speaking as a chemist... (Score:2)
Read the entire article. It talks about lots of aspects about how society has come to fear chemistry - this quote about the decline of labs in schools made for particularly depressing reading for me:
Re:Speaking as a chemist... (Score:5, Informative)
You can in fact go out and buy caustics (sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide) from the local hardware store, supermarket or builder's merchant. You can accidentally create chlorine gas quite easily using common household products. You can buy lethal poisons almost anywhere. It would be BETTER if more people had practical chemical experience because at the moment Joe Public is mostly totally unaware of the risks he runs. He is afraid of "acid" because he does not know that acidity alone is harmless. He is unafraid of bleach, caustics, solvents, and any alkali which comes in a brightly coloured plastic box. And your solution is?
Re:Speaking as a chemist... (Score:3, Insightful)
Explosives? No, just powerful oxidizers. But, then again, you can (or could?) buy SolidOx over the counter at many welding supply shops. As the name implied, SolidOx is a solid oxidizer for welding purposes that could be used to make explosives if you really wanted to.
Face it - some people will find a way to kill themselves! And the 0.0001% of the population that happen to
Re:Speaking as a chemist... (Score:2)
Re:Speaking as a chemist... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was young I did many stupid things, and I sure hope you did too. It's all part of growing up. When you take all the risk out of living, you're not only creating a race of bored couch potatoes, but you're also creating people who will do stupid things like mixing chlorine and ammonia while cleaning the toilet, and who will panic when things get out of hand.
After all, play is in the first place a preparation for adulthood, it teaches common sense around danger. And common sense in these matters is something that seems to be lacking more and more these days.
People who haven't had small accidents when they were young, will have big accidents when the are grown up.
Re:Speaking as a chemist... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but the day of risk taking is over. I did a lot of stupid things too, but the difference between you and me and the kid that didn't survive the accident is that that kid's parents have now lobbied Congress or local authorities to outlaw the very thing that killed their kids.
Until we begin to accept again that there is indeed a level of acceptable losses, we'll forever be stuck in this overly-sterilized world.
That's the very point of this article. Lessons are learned through taking risks, and without the ability to take risks and learn said lessons, people grow up more ignorant and in the end, more of a risk to themselves.
You'll never truly know how long it takes to decelerate from 60mph until the first time you slam on your brakes, no matter how many times you've read it in a book. You'll never know how hot the stove actually is until the first time you burn yourself as a child, no matter how many times your parents have told you to not touch.
Oh well...
I say "no harm, no foul.." (Score:2)
The people that say, "you can't have dangerous chemical because you might not handle them safely" might very well next say, "You can't climb mountains because you might fall off", and "you can't play football because you might blow out your knee"
We should assume that adult citizens can protect themselves and let them be responsibl
Re:Speaking as a chemist... (Score:2)
Now, thats not fair. It should be up to the one ordering the chemical to determine what they need. They were supplying to many people, myself included. Have you ever had a budget in school for a lab experiment, had it run out, and go out to get the reagents needed?
And as for danger, who here as a child didn't add iodine crystals (made with the instructions from the Golden Book of Chemistry) and add it to ammonia, take the
Re:Also Speaking as a Chemist, I say Bullocks (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, part of it is a mindset that comes from knowing that you are handling something dangerous. If you remove all the danger from a teaching lab (danger from fire, from acute toxicity, etc), you remove the mental aspect of "be careful."
I've observed this trend over several decades. It is not that older chemists are more cavalier, it is that they tend to be more careful due to proper training. But with the confidence that comes from having that proper training, the
Or Electronics (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently looked into buying a dc-dc converter to run my laptop in a plane. These things are pretty expensive and my guess is that I could build one for $20 AUD or so.
The problem is that airport security people are not going to believe that my bundle of components in a jiffy box which I soldered up myself is not a bomb, whereas the proper device from the shop at four times the price at least looks legit.
Then I wondered what it is going to be like in the near future where the flight control system probably runs windows CE or similar and I rock up to business class and start some software which I wrote myself.
Software may be a terrorist weapon soon. Will people who roll their own be viewed with suspicion?
Which takes me back to a trip to Adelaide last year with my family. Coming back I put my laptop in the checked in baggage (inside a suitcase), probably not a good idea. I carry it on these days. Before boarding an announcement came on that they had to change a wheel or something. This is Adelaide and you can see the plane right outside the windows and I didn't see any wheel changing going on.
To cut a long story short when I tried to boot up mandrake at home in Melbourne that laptop was flat as a 20 year old leaky dry cell. No way would it show any lights without a power supply.
Now the airlines tell you not to run your laptop while landing and taking off. Did this laptop run for three hours in the terminal + plane + terminal + my place because some security guy didn't know how to shut down linux?
Re:Or Electronics (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Or Electronics (Score:5, Interesting)
If your job is to open things up and find bombs, then what's stopping you from simply opening up everything, even if every common sense bone in your body says "this is a legitimate product, not a bomb"? After all, this is just some traveller's crap, not mine. The whole thing reaks of undertrained staff who are not properly overseen and managed, and who have no deterrent from their superiors against unnecessary searches.
Then again I think it's possible that they do this sort of thing as retaliation against travellers who confuse them; as punishment for people who try to travel with devices that they can't understand. They're subtly saying "if you want to be different, which makes our job more complicated, we're going to make your life more complicated. This guy thinks he's hot snot and probably makes more than me - I'll show him."
Re:Or Electronics (Score:5, Interesting)
Procedures call for opening and searching baggage. Equipment is tested only on the outside and if an alarm cannot be resolved the situation is escallated to someone who can make further decisions on the matter. Dismantling equipment is NOT part of TSA training or instruction. That said, I don't recall that they are instructed to NOT do that either. I think perhaps making them understand a list of things NOT to do would be pretty effective in such situations.
The personalities of the people in TSA are quite varied but I tend to limit them to a few categories:
1. I just want a government job [so I don't have to work...] AKA I don't really care
These people are the least threatening to property, freedom or anything else. They don't care. Not much more to say about it than that.
2. I'm a patriot and I'm the first line of defense against terrorism!
These people are confusing "first line" with "most important line." The TSA, at least as far as airport security is concerned, should act only as a loose filter to help ensure air travel safety. These people really think they are searching for Bin Laden in baggage and in people's pockets! "Overzealous" would be the best words to describe these people. The most positive thing I could say about them is that they would do their job for free.
3. Wannabe Cop!
This is a separate category from the #2 group in that they look at everyone as if they were a criminal with criminal intent. They wear their cloth badges and patches with pride and only feel weakened by not be allowed to wear a firearm. If they were qualified to actually BE a cop, they would... so we already know they have some inherent deficiencies that would disqualify them from actually BEING a cop. Let your imagination go wild and you're still probably not too far from the truth where it comes to their psychological disposition.
4. I'm just doing this because I can't get any other jobs
I was a member of this category. I did my job. I did it as well as I could under the circumstances. I mostly just followed rules and tried to mind my own business... I learned to do this only after I attempted to assert myself when I saw things that were "wrong" for correction and failed. After learning how pointless it is, I continued my job search and eventually got back into my career. I knew a lot of people in the same boat back then.
Now as far as personal property damage and such, I have to say that it's not as common as you're making it out to be. However, you do need to keep escallating the issue if it's important to you. There is always someone higher to contact about the issue until, frankly, they are tired of hearing from you and will eventually resolve the situation to your satisfaction. I don't know how the denial of claims is determined only because I've never seen a denial before.
It also helps to question them about their documented procedures. They will claim that their procedures are not available for public disclosure. That's essentially true. But if you catch them in a lie, you've got some leverage. You can ask specific questions about whether or not something they did was part of standard operating procedure or not. They will either confirm or deny whether it's part of procedure... you might have to press the issue. I'd be a little surprised if they didn't answer the question and resorted to "we can neither confirm nor deny..."
Good luck to all who reported similar problems. And YES, don't trust valuables to your luggage. That has been true since before the TSA was conceived. Frankly, when I'm travelling overseas and I want to bring some snazzy souvenirs or products home with me, I'd just as soon SHIP it to myself. It's often more reliable and less prone to damage and needless inspection. Plus, there are more definite ways to insure your shipment against theft and damage.
Happened to me with my modem too (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's just say that not only I got pulled to the side and asked to explain what that thing is. Then I hauled by the police to some machine that, as far as I can guess, was a sorta giant
The new American project (Score:5, Insightful)
That project of course is the "Dumbing Down of America" -project that started with politics and social sciences, then went on to encompass history, then geography and now I guess science is next.
Makes sense I suppose.
Re:The new American project (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of chemistry, of course, this would self-correct a lot faster than eugenics was, as individual amateurs can kill themselves a lot faster with organic chemicals than a set of bureaucratic machinery can churn out obviously stupid laws. That doesn't necessarily make it immune, though. Idiots try to mix their own explosives all the time.
Good For America (Score:5, Funny)
You're not a chemist are you?
Exactly what the terrorists want (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorist paranoia not the only cause for this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The war on (some) drugs is also responsible for making chemistry a difficult hobby to persue. Many common chemicals are hard to get now days, red phosphorus for instance. In some states buying glassware requires a permit and jumping through other hoops (Texas is one such state I've read about.)
I remember from reading biographies of of Thomas Edison and being amazed at the chemical lab he had as a teenager; it would be almost impossible for a kid now to learn and investigate chemistry like Edison did.
What a sorry state of affairs this is for the inquisitive.
Re:Terrorist paranoia not the only cause for this. (Score:3, Funny)
the paranoid religious right (Score:4, Insightful)
to quote another's sig i read in here: "If God hates the same people you do then maybe you made God in your image"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's right, blame the chemicals (Score:2)
walking to Walmart is a crime??? sheesh...
Chemistry sets (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, I was never able to find a combination that was truly worthy. About the worst I was able to do was to give the bathtub a purple stain that no amount of scrubbing was going to get rid of (and believe me... Mom had me try).
It is kind of sad to think that my son will probably never do anything similar (of course if he does, I'll smile and my wife will be making him scrub the tub).
-S
End of the World FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
What is this attraction to appealing to fear, uncertainty, and doubt among slashdot submissions lately? The world is not going to burn or freeze due to global warming, George W Bush doesn't give a shit about your personal phone calls, terrorists aren't hiding behind the counter at every 7/11, and the Internet is not being taken over by corporations. Get a grip people.
Top tips for parents and toys (Score:2, Funny)
If one of your children is killed playing with a chemistry set, make a game of it by challenging your surviving children to reanimate him or her.
It's amazing how much kids can learn about chemistry the old-fashioned way. As soon as you get home from work, demand that they mix you an Old-Fashioned.
Regarding other toys..
To determine a toy's safety, try these simple tests:
Do
Re:Top tips for parents and toys (Score:4, Informative)
So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sufficiently backward education makes technology indistinguishable from magic?
Blame TV, not the government (Score:2)
Zero risk society (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually met a chemistry teacher in the 80s who sprinkled the lab floor with explosive crystals so they would pop underfoot the first day of class -- and had a kid go home and fatally blow himself up making his own batch. Placing personal responsibility isn't entirely clear when dealing with kids. But it isn't like nobody has died in high school sports either, is it? Maybe the formula is something like the greater good of society weighed against the occasional loss of the _foolishly_ adventurous?
I'm not completely worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
If people are interested in science, they'll try their own crazy stuff their own way. What should *really* be sold are safety kits... flame suits, face shields... I mean, who here hasn't made a flame thrower with an aerosol can, or a potato gun w/PVC pipe, or tried to make some homemade napalm from some rumor-recipe that didn't work?
We did all kinds of microwave tricks in the dorm microwave in college 5 years ago... it wasn't terrorism, but we did make a stable plasmoid.
And actually, just yesterday, my college friend asked me for copies of the microwave videos and any other pranks/explosions. (They were mostly harmless) The reason is that his wife is pregnant, and he wants to make sure his kid is brought up right.
After all, you don't want to blow the door off your *own* microwave...
Home Chemistry An Endangered Hobby in U.S. (Score:2)
Hand over the baby and no one will get hurt. (Score:2)
"I'm sorry sir but this is the third time you've managed to star on "Cops", place your testicles on the ground and back up slowly with your hands in the air."
So help fight it with your family!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
We play with dry ice a lot. The kids are young (all around 7), so our projects are often very simple. Just having a pail of water with a few pieces of dry ice in the bottom bubbling up was enough to scare most of the neighbors and adult family members. They think I am endangering everyones lives. Luckily my elementary teacher wife explains to them all that everything is fine (in terms most of them can understand)
Last week we played with borax and elmers glue. It makes for some fun textures. They are a bit young to fully grasp some concepts of what is happening on a molecular level, but I think they do get the general idea (I like Lego analogies).
Now that summer is here, we can probably do some fun stuff outside. Maybe blow up some pop bottles with dry ice. Hopefully I don't end up in guantanamo considering it is now classified as a terrorist weapon. Lucky for me, my stay at guantanamo can be endless and without a trial! Wahoo....life in prison for playing with liquid c02!!!!
Anyone have any other simple, cheap, and education little home ideas (for my crew targetted at age 7-10, though anything would be nice)?
The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments (Score:4, Interesting)
The basement was my university. (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things that has bothered me for a long time is that educators and policy-makers don't seem to understand the crucial educational role of unstructured, unsupervised, childrens' activity, from, say, about age 7 to 14.
Teachers think they're doing the teaching, when really they're building on a foundation that the child has laid on his- or her-own. You have to develop the readiness yourself Only when you're interested in something and have tried to figure it out for yourself and failed, are you ready to absorb "the answer."
This applies to all fields, of course. Athletics coaches can't do much for a kid who didn't spend hundreds and hundreds of hours in the backyard tenaciously pitching a baseball over and over and over and over and over again.
But it's particularly true in the sciences.
A lot of the stuff kids do is dangerous and would be frowned on if adults really knew what they were doing. When I crushed vacuum tubes in bench vises, I could have cut myself on the broken glass or got something in my eye. God only knows what that sticky goop was--sort of combined the properties of Vaseline and rubber cement--that was inside some potted telephone transformers my buddy and I opened. We used to throw it at each other because it was so darned hard to get off.
Even the stuff that is not dangerous, at the exploratory stage seems so non-educational and misguided that no supervising adult would be let a kid pursue it. I read the explanations of how a transistor worked in "Popular Electronics." From everything I read, it seemed to me that, well, a transistor was just two diodes back-to-back, right? And, well, a battery was basically like a diode, right? (Wrong, of course, but at a certain age it seems plausible. I mean it made current flow in one direction, right?) Like an alchemist or a perpetual-motion inventor, I spent literally weeks tinkering with 1.5-volt batteries connected plus-to-plus with 9-volt transistor radio batteries, adding resistors and so forth, and trying to get my lashups to amplify. I was certain that I was on the brink of a new discovery and that I was about to get it to work any day now. I even had a name for it. I was going to be the inventor that gave the world the "Chemistor."
I probably learned more NOT getting my "Chemistor" to work than I did building Heathkits which did work.
A few months ago NPR was doing a restrospective of "Fresh Air" interviews, and Terry Gross was interviewing Grandmaster Flash, the rap artist. Holy cow! He was a nerdy basement tinkerer just like me... sort of. He would prowl the alleys for thrown-out radios and audio gear, and spent a lot of time building his own audio consoles that had the features he needed for what he was doing.
I often thing the most underrated social injustice is the different self-educational opportunities available to kids who live in a house with a basement versus kids that live in an apartment.
Biology? I never really "got" biology. Why? Because I was doing my basement tinkering with batteries and wires.
My wife, well, one day when she was a kid, her mother comes into the kitchen. There is a dead chicken on the kitchen table. There is a bottle of preserving fluid. My wife is using a pair of tweezers and is picking lice off the chicken and dropping them in the bottle. My wife's mother says, "Oh, dear. Sweetie, couldn't you manage to be interested in butterflies instead?"
My wife, she "gets" biology.
Hm (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, lately it's wrapped in a 'fear of terrorism' cloak, but is this anything but the logically extrapolated point of where we've BEEN going for the last 50 years?
Ever LOOK at a current chemistry set for say a young high-schooler? THEY SUCK. It's got these impenetrably child-proof capped chemical bottles, micro-amounts of anything, and very little in there more dangerous than sodium chloride.
No, while I understand the propensity of shallow people (ala Wired) to turn this into a subject with which they can make conveniently trendy political attacks on an unpopular administration, the fact is that we've been turning into a litigiously-driven culture of fear for decades.
(Tangentially but not irrelevant to the discussion is the world of our children. I don't know about you, but most of my model rocketry and early
You want people to go into the sciences? Fine: somehow make it so that if a stupid kid jabs himself with a pipette in the eye, he somehow doesn't get to sue the pipette manufacturer. Make it so that if Jenny wants to build a model rocket or airplane, she can fly it without fear of a multi-bajillion dollar suit if the rocket breaks cranky Mrs. Finster's bay window.
Sometimes to learn, you have to have the freedom to experiment. Sometimes, the experiments can be mildly dangerous. In a society whose lawyers have designed it so that they can wring maximum financial gain, er, "justice" from every little risk, does it surprise ANYONE that this is having a stultifying effect on the sciences in the US?
If you "should" have it, you can buy it (Score:5, Informative)
Now, there's also the "illegal" part. Namely explosives and drugs. So yes, the government has a definite interest in keeping its people dumb, or at least educate them only in a fashion suitable for the government. Pol Pot forgot that last part. It's been refined now. Someone who does not know how to create a problem is no problem.
You see the same development in IT. Fewer and fewer people know how to program (I mean program. NOT writing code! I mean knowing how the things work, not knowing how to write a few lines of code and rely on the magic of the compiler). Thus fewer and fewer people are able to actually make things work in a "non intended" way.
We're being reduced to being consumers. You get what you should have. Not what you want.
Say what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh right, every slashdot article ever.
Bittorrent is not evil.
Chemistry sets are not evil.
Guns are not evil.
Network analyzers are not evil.
The good old days - the bad old days... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re-run (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, americans just don't like thinkers.
Tom
I had a cool chem kit as a kid, but liability... (Score:4, Insightful)
A few years later, digging through some older stuff in the garage, I came across the kit. I wanted to replenish some of the chemicals, but it turned out that the company that made the kit had gone out of business as some kid had managed to do something spectacularly destructive and sued the company out of existence.
There are probably numerous reasons that chemistry kits are no longer readily available. One is probably that there are fewer folks interested in science. My guess is that with our entertainment culture, kids don't need to be as inquisitive about the world around them, since they're getting most of their information on TV. Liability is another important reason. Another is likely that a lot of kids with an interest in science (rational explanations for how things work) now get into computers.
Fear of being charged with terrorism is just a convenient excuse for a much more troubling trend in society.
It's not fear of terrorism... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also the same people who have blocked construction of new nuclear power plants consistently over the past 25 years - so the US is still mostly using reactors designed in the 50s/60s that are considerably less safe than what we can make today.
Life in a free society entails some dangers. But let's think about this: let's say that 12 people a year are killed by amateur chemistry set explosions and make the headlines, causing people to clamor for the banning of chemistry sets. Does anyone think about the 120 people per year saved by a new antibiotic developed by someone who started out playing with a chemistry set as a child? The consequences of actions aren't always simple and obvious, and the sooner people realize that, the better.
Cheers, -b.
We Teach Our Kids To Be Afraid, Period (Score:5, Insightful)
However, when my own children were growing up in the 80s and 90s, things had begun to change quite radically.
Now, with my grandchildren living with us, my wife and I have an ongoing argument about their play activities.
She just doesn't want our five and seven year old grandsons to go outside at all without supervision. They must stay in the front yard, aren't allowed to even go down the street to play with other kids their age.
So they stay inside mostly and watch a lot of TV--and eat.
I continually hound her about leaving them alone, letting them go out and PLAY, but "it's too dangerous out there" is her refrain.
Of course, it probably IS more dangerous--but the chances of their coming to harm from sexual predators or what-have-you are still infinitessimal. Yet they ARE coming to deliberate harm from their sedentary lifestyle!
In good part, I blame the 24-hour news cycle promulgated by Ted Turner et al. With so much time to fill up, you get to hear ad nauseum about this or that serial killer, or child rapist, or whatever. This leads to a grossly distorted view of what's going on in the world, and it makes everyone AFRAID.
Personally, I'm surprised that anyone still BUYS chemistry sets for their kids. After all, didn't we see a story on CNN the other day about some kid burning himself?
Crazy old Lazar (Score:3, Interesting)
He's the dude that claimed to have reverse engineered UFO's at Area 51, and claimed to have advanced degrees from MIT and CIT (which no one can substantiate). He's on all the UFO conspiracy shows.
A colourful character for sure, and a go-getter, but anything coming form him seems that it might be taken with a grain of salt (errr, sodium chloride).
Forbid water! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easy to extract hydrogen and oxygen from water, with a little bit of electricity. Hydrogen is a good explosive and only requires a tiny spark to blow off, as we all learned in chemistry labs.
Are they going to also prevent from using water? How about free beer?
This is insane.
Re:Awww =( (Score:2)
Re:Awww =( (Score:3, Informative)
[Flamebait] It's what they do in the UK (Score:2)
And yes, I did make a small amount of guncotton in the 6th form. I can still remember going around deaf all afternoon...our chemistry master preferred nitrogen tri-iodide, because the smoke is purple.
Re:Awww =( (Score:2)
But you can make a lot of other fun substances: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetone_Peroxide [wikipedia.org] (it's rumored to pass through airport scanners), iodine azide (FUN!), lead azide, cuprum azide, etc.
Pyrophorous metals are also fun (do you know that fine _iron_ powder _burns_ at the room temperature?).
Re:Awww =( (Score:2)
Oh, noes, I know how to make a common military sabotage device, guess I'm one of the 1% of chem hobbyists that are making people paranoid about the other 99%.
Re:Awww =( (Score:2)
Well, I think _all_ male chemists made explosives at some time during their career. It's generally nothing to be afraid of, but with the current terroris scare...
Re:Awww =( (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, thermite is a mixture of iron oxide and aluminium powder...
Re:Awww =( (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Awww =( (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you. That's a keeper!
Re:Let them have explosives and biological weapons (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let them have explosives and biological weapons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not just the kids. (Score:2)
Re:Worried about what "we" are teaching "our" kids (Score:2)
ah yes, but where are you going to get them from??? and just how few experiments will you be able to do when you finally get hold of them??? the contents of "chemistry" sets have been seriously neutered to avoid liability claims