Physicalchemist

Clicks, Pops, and Other Irritants

2011-03-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

     I still remember the time I first heard a compact disk (I have an aversion to spelling disk d-i-s-c.) played and it was being played on a high quality system. I knew immediately that I would have to switch to CDs as soon as my financial condition permitted it. That was about twenty-five years ago. I eventually replaced most of my records and have no interest in even taking up room in my home with a turntable.
    Why do I feel this way? What was it about that first experience that impressed me so much? The short answer is everything. For me listening to music is an experience and anything that detracts from that experience is bad. Someone walking into the room and starting to talk is annoying to me as are background sounds like lawnmowers, traffic sounds, and construction noises. I don’t think I am alone in feeling this way. The problem is that at least 95% of all the music I listen to is classical music. Classical music has something modern music lacks, a wide dynamic range. The loudest and quietest parts of a work easily differ by 60db. There are actually short periods of complete silence. So how is this relevant?
     Roughly thirty-five years ago while working in the PVC industry I was involved in optimizing phonograph record compounds. Phonograph records or as they are called today, vinyl, are made of a vinyl chloride-vinyl acetate copolymer usually with fine particle vinyl chloride homopolymer added as a blending resin. Stabilizers and lubricants are added to help the polymer survive the processing step. A few percent carbon black is added primarily to cover up any contaminant that would be visible inside the record after pressing. During the 1950s RCA produced 45RPM records that were transparent red and I am truly impressed that they always looked pristine.
     The compound ingredients are mixed in a high intensity mixer and then extruded using a twin screw extruder and a special die with a rotary cutter to produce pellets of compound. These pellets are then put into a boom type extruder which forms what we used to call a doughnut. This doughnut is picked up hot and placed on the record label already waiting on the spindle of the press. A second label is placed on the doughnut and the press activated. The press platens come together in the heated hydraulic press and the polymer flows out to fill the record grooves. After a fast cooling step the pressed record is removed by hand and placed on a trimmer that removes the flashing along the edge. At that time a decent operator could produce a record every 20 seconds. Not many years after this we upgraded to an automatic press capable of pressing records at any rate the record compound would permit.
     From the viewpoint of the end user you would think that the primary objective of the record making process would be to produce the highest quality record possible at an acceptable cost. They would be wrong. If you follow the path between recording studio and record store you find a whole bunch middle men. There are sales and marketing people, distributors, shippers, and the retailer all in need of making a profit. The recording artists also get a piece of the action. If you consider that the record complete with dust jacket and album cover cost less than a dollar to produce back in those days and the final product sold for over five dollars you come to realize that the guy pressing the records does not have the highest profit margin.
     Going back to the 20 seconds it takes to produce a record you can see that making one in 19 seconds represents a 5% increase in productivity. That means an increase in profit margin and so a record compound capable of producing a record in one second less will look mighty attractive to the record manufacturer.
     Now imagine a process producing good quality records at a rate of one every 19 seconds when the processing conditions are exactly right and the compound has the optimum rheological properties. Now also imagine a slightly altered situation where the record compound being used is near its upper limit in flow properties and the temperatures of the processing equipment are a little short of ideal. You see what is going to happen. The record compound will not flow as well and some of the grooves will not form properly. This is called non-fill and causes a short burst of buzzing when played. Records can also be removed from the press while a little too hot and the operator if he grasps the record with a little too much pressure will cause a deformation beginning at the record edge and continuing about an inch towards the center. I have seen deformations so bad that the stylus actually loses contact due to the upward momentum of the tonearm when rising up the leading side of one of these deformations. Records with deformations such as this are said to be warped. Records will also warp if you store them at too high a temperature but that is a different issue.
     If you eliminate the records with obvious and unacceptable manufacturing defects you are still left with a record full of clicks, pops, hiss, and distortion. This is where rock has the advantage over classical music. With rock who is going to notice minor clicks and pops? The hiss will be completely buried in the signal and let’s face it, distortion is a part of rock music anyway.
     In the laboratory where record compounds were developed we used record platens with silent grooves and with recorded tones. When you listened to these records you could hear all of the defects in the silent grooves. With a scanning electron microscope you can see various defects in the grooves including an overall roughness. This roughness is probably not an issue if you consider that the radial velocity of the groove relative to the stylus is at least 22cm/sec so that even nearest the record label any defect causing the stylus to move less than 10µm will probably be inaudible.
     At one point in my life I spent the money buying pre-recorded open reel tapes and even though the clicks and pops were gone and the distortion reduced to a much more acceptable level, the hiss seemed to worsen. Dolby systems worked pretty good at eliminating the hiss but tapes were terribly inconvenient. They were also very expensive. And as I found out later they do not have an unlimited life. I also noticed that the magnetic signal seemed to migrate into adjacent layers of tape so that you could hear an extremely weak signal in the silent areas of the music
     With a compact disk the quality of the original recording comes through and as long as the CD is treated well the sound quality does not deteriorate with age. If there is something coming through on records that is missing on CDs it is not worth the price of noise and distortion. I have CDs of the exact same recordings I had on records and have compared the two. There is absolutely no way a record sounds as good as a CD.

Settled in and Wired for Sound

2011-03-02T15:18:00.000-08:00

     Things are looking good in our new home. All of the walls and ceilings are painted, the new kitchen is complete, the art work is up, the furniture is in place, and the majority of stuff is put away. I even took my old stereo out of storage and hooked it up.
     Let me tell you about my stereo. In addition to the newer components (CD player, DVD player, etc) I have a Dynaco PAT-4 preamplifier, and a Dynaco Stereo120 power amplifier. I left my Empire 398 turntable and my open reel tape deck in storage. The speakers I bought from my brother back around 1987. I don’t know much about speakers except how they work and what they sound like. These speakers were apparently priced originally somewhere around $600 and their sound is awesome. He only parted with them because he found better ones at a price he couldn’t pass up. In any case when hooked up to my system the combined performance is better than anything I have heard in over forty years. Yes, the system is that old.
     I purchased the Dynaco components back in 1968 as kits. This was back in the days when electronics were still made of discreet components. Integrated circuits might have been just making their appearance then. What is amazing is that the preamplifier has such a selection of inputs that one of them has an impedance matched to a CD deck that wasn’t even dreamed of back then. Is that luck or what? It also works for the DVD player. The result is a stereo that far exceeds anything I have heard in my travels. A McIntosh system would probably outperform it to be sure but that kind of equipment is so far out of my price range that I don’t even think about it. Besides my hearing is not improving and I have to wonder if I would even be able to appreciate the difference at this point.
     I hooked the DVD deck to the system and those 12 inch woofers give that wonderful big sound you usually only hear in movie theaters. Some movies like Hunt for Red October need that kind of sound. The only thing missing is a larger screen television and that will probably happen once my cash flow goes back to normal. Movies are important to me since I do not have the television hooked up for programming and in fact I have not watch television since the 1970s unless I was at someone elses house. From what I see I don’t think I am missing much. Maybe my relationship with TV can be a future topic.
     By now you have figured out that sound is important to me. I mourned the loss of my stereo while we were in the apartment and so it is very exciting for me to have it back again. My wife and I have a very extensive collection of compact disks. Between the two of us we must have over 2000 CDs. I love CDs. Anyone who tells you that vinyl sounds better than a compact disc either has a hearing problem or else listens to music where the advantages of CDs don’t matter. A lot of people will disagree with me on this but if they do they are wrong. This is a topic I won’t compromise on and so plan on a major discussion of it in the very near future.

Help! My Checkbook Has Sprung a Leak

2010-11-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

We have embarked on a new life journey. After spending the past four or five years resting comfortably and lazily in our apartment we took the plunge and joined the ranks of the homeowner. If you read this blog you know we were looking for a place last fall but gave up. The market just didn’t seem right. Prices have dropped since then as have mortgage rates. The pieces simply fell into place for us. So during the next few weeks we will be devoting most of our time to moving.
There are several reasons for making this move now. My in-laws who are very elderly require an increasing amount of care. A few years ago when they lost the ability to keep up with the maintenance requirements of a home they sold it and moved into an apartment. Their timing was perfect considering all of the health issues that have occurred since then. In any event it is easy to see how important it is to live close to them so we can drive them to their appointments and generally lend needed assistance. Neither of them should be driving a vehicle at this point and we feel some responsibility in maintaining the public safety. We will be living about a mile from their place and that seems close enough.

The other reasons for moving now involve money. Despite prices dropping continuously during the past year, homes remain stubbornly unsold on the market. For any given home there is a maximum price that a buyer is willing to pay and an minimum price that a seller is willing to accept. Right now those two numbers are too far apart. For many of those homes where these two numbers converged a sale has taken place. I figure the market probably still has a 5-10% drop ahead of it and worked that into my offer. I have no illusions about timing the market just right. I’ll settle for close. Luckily for us the seller accepted the realities of the market and dropped their price.

With so few properties selling right now it is difficult to judge by comparison what a fair price is but the tax assessment on the place we purchased dropped $31K since last year and we paid a price about $55K less than that new assessment. Overall I think we paid a fair price neither being cheated nor taking advantage of the seller.

Now we are in the process of cleaning, painting, and updating the kitchen. The new stove and dishwasher gets delivered tomorrow and the garage door will be repaired right after lunch. I think I am beginning to understand what economists mean when they talk about money having velocity.

A Few Thoughts on 3 Wars

2010-08-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

There was an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, The Guns of August 1990 , where Fouad Ajami argues that, “The last 20 years would have been very different had the American forces taken that open road to Baghdad the first time around.” We can be fairly sure that the decision to stop short of victory was made by President George H.W. Bush. Whether he was influenced by General Powell I do not know but I believe General Norman Schwarzkopf could have brought the war to a more satisfying conclusion with minimal casualties. Saddam Hussein would have been removed from the middle east equation and maybe this change would have allowed us to avoid the two attacks on the World Trade Center. Its something to speculate about.

Didn’t we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam as well? We could argue this all day long but I am convinced that militarily the war was essentially won when the Tet Offensive failed. Why the media chose to portray it otherwise is pretty strong evidence that our media has had an agenda for a long time. It probably doesn't matter since our civilian leadership had already removed victory as an option early in the game. We learned quick enough that the enemy was completely committed to victory.

Even though Truman was a committed New Dealer I still liked him. He was both feisty and I believe honest. However I totally disagree with his decision to not pursue total victory in Korea. Even if Truman was justified in relieving MacArthur of his command in Korea it does not in any way make MacArthur’s belief in total victory any less right. We would not be dealing with North Korea now if we had gotten it right back then. Moreover the people of North Korea would not have spent the past sixty years in misery.

My $100,000-$250,000 Tobacco Windfall

2010-05-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

I used to be a smoker. Starting to smoke cigarettes in 1964 I might have rationalized my decision by pointing out that men smoked and boys did not. As an impressionable young man I could not help but notice that all of my role models smoked. My dad smoked as did both of my grandfathers. The movies provided addition reinforcement. John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, and even Bing Crosby smoked. And so I started not so much because of peer pressure as what I might call societal pressure, a right of passage if you will.

Tobacco companies and the medical profession were still arguing about the health issues associated with smoking. Television programming was riddled with cigarette commercials. Hospitals permitted smoking. And I suspect there were as many ashtrays in the halls of government as there are Marxists now. In short there was no stigma attached to smoking.

Looking back now I can not imagine that I enjoyed my first cigarettes but somehow I acquired the habit. By the time I reached my eighteenth birthday I was fully addicted to the damned things and easily smoked a pack a day. I even smoked an occasional cigar and pipe. Upon reflection I have to admit that I probably did not look as sophisticated as Bing Crosby with my pipe. But somehow the human mind deludes itself and presents a self image that has absolutely no connection with reality.

Smoking was not as expensive in the sixties as it is now. I paid $2.87 per carton (10 packs) for most brands and for a while smoked the more expensive ($3.60 per carton) Benson & Hedges cigarettes that came in hard pocket size boxes. Unhappiness reigned in the smokers’ world when cigarette prices reached $5.00 per carton.

As the years passed evidence for the relationship between smoking and cancer accumulated. In spite of this I continued smoking regularly reaching a peak of about two packs a day. At some point I decided to quit or at least cut down on my smoking. Trying to quit is a fun activity. So much fun that I did it many many times over a period of years. Well, maybe fun isn’t the word.

I could tell you that my success was variable or I could be honest and say I failed in every attempt. When I made a conscious effort I found that I could easily get by on a half pack a day but over time my smoking would increase and I would find myself going through more than a pack a day.

Sometime in early 1975 I detected some blood after coughing. This event elevated the importance of quiting to a new level. If I needed incentive to quit this was it. But so powerful is the addiction to nicotine that even fear can not overcome the urge to light up the next cigarette.
I discovered that the first cigarette of the morning was critical and needed to be delayed as long as possible. On a work day I usually broke down around 10AM. Getting aggravated was a license to smoke. A quarrel with a poor outcome might elicit a response such as, “Why do I even care if these things kill me”. Any excuse worked.

After a few weeks of successfully keeping my smoking down to half a pack a day I determined that the time was right to just quit. If I was a man I would be able to beat this. I knew most of the triggers that would have to be overcome and prepared myself psychically to face them.

I finished dinner, smoked a cigarette, and prayed to God that I would have the strength to follow through with this. Those first hours were pure misery. I kept an unopened pack of cigarettes in my pocket at all times in case of emergency. Not having cigarettes just makes you obsess more. Failure would require the opening of the new pack and even though that was a weak barrier it was a barrier. Somehow I made it through the evening.

The next morning I fought off the urge and went to work. I skipped my coffee since I knew the association would be strong and would make it more difficult. I sure didn’t need to make it more difficult. At noontime I drove home for lunch and had my usual two sandwiches. Then the craving for a cigarette became irresistable. It had been 18 hours since my last fix and I started to lose it. I broke down and lit up. It was the best cigarette I ever smoked in my life.

Overcome by guilt I wondered if I would ever be able to follow through. Then it occurred to me that the full feeling after a meal was the strongest trigger possible. I always needed a cigarette after a meal. If I ate breakfast that day I would not have made it to noon. This best cigarette also turned out to be my last cigarette. I still remember the date, May 5, 1975.

The secret that finally made quitting possible was quitting meals. I no longer ate lunch and dinner. I divided all of my food into tiny snacks so that I was never even close to full. This didn’t make quitting easy. It just made it possible.

I would be lying if I did not admit that quitting was nearly a living hell for the first week. The physiological need for a smoke probably goes away after a week or two but it did not feel that way to me. I can not remember anymore, but the craving did not go away for a long time. The desire to smoke lasted for months.

Trying to remember back 35 years I tried to think of all the things I did to bring quitting to a successful conclusion. Here are the main points I think made the difference.
Cutting back to half a pack a day a few weeks prior to actually quitting may have helped. Smoking less means that the concentration of nicotine in my system was reduced slightly well in advance to reducing it to zero. Since I do not understand the mechanism of nicotine addiction I can not say with certainty that cutting down prior to quitting actually helps.
Quitting coffee drinking removes a recurring action associated with smoking. Let’s face it, coffee and cigarettes go together like toast and butter. The same is true of beer and smoking. Anything associated with smoking has to be eliminated. I started drinking coffee again within a month with no problem.
I think the pack of cigarettes I carried with me for the first few weeks was an important psychological crutch. You may be able to navigate your basement in the dark but that is no reason to not have a flashlight with you.
Giving up meals was the single biggest factor. Reducing my food consumption to nibbling and avoiding eating enough to get full was critical. Dare I say that to a smoker a big meal without a cigarette is like sex without the orgasm?
I changed my routine. I started taking walks and avoided activities like reading, watching television, and listening to music. They had too strong an association with smoking and so why take the risk.

It has been established fact for a long time that smoking is bad for your health. Smoking is associated with emphysema, cancer—lung cancer in particular; and smoking combines synergistically with other irritants such as silica and asbestos to cause a whole host of health problems. With governments using cigarette smokers as a major source of revenue the habit has become very expensive.

To put the cost into perspective I performed a rough calculation to see how much money I saved by quitting 35 years ago. If I assume an incremental price increase between 1975 and the present and make reasonable guesses about returns on investment over that time I figure that the money I saved approaches a quarter of a million dollars. If I assume my numbers are too optimistic I can scale it down and say that at worst I saved $100,000. (What do you suppose I spent that money on?)

There is a part of smoking I never hear anyone talk about. Smoking stinks. Tobacco smoke sticks to your clothing, permeates your home and car, and gives you bad breath. Which brings me to the question of the century. Why would someone do something that costs a lot of money, harms their health, and makes them smell like an ashtray all the time? If you were born after 1980 and smoke you have to be either self-destructive or else just plain stupid.

Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome

2010-04-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

My silence for the past eleven months can not be blamed on writer’s block or a lack of things to write about. I have spent the past year mostly occupied by family and work. I am happy to say I have found time to read and watch an occasional movie. I spend the time in between wondering how to plan my future in a post-constitutional America. Words like adapt, improvise, and overcome came to mind. Updating a blog that only four people in the world bother to read never seemed particularly important.

Last fall my wife and I invested considerable time searching for a new home and on three occasions thought we had found what we were looking for. The first house we considered was perfect in several ways but overpriced. We made an offer which was not accepted and the seller’s counter-offer was still too high. The second home we considered was in many ways better but needed a new roof. We made an offer taking in account the fact that we would have to pay out close to $12,000 to replace the roof. They gave a curt no to our offer. My wife loved the place whereas I exhibited a distinct lack of enthusiasm. I figured I could adapt to any living situation and so we made a second offer which was also turned down though this time they responded with a counter-offer. Eventually we settled on a compromise price that I believed to be very generous but something I could live with if I didn’t give it too much thought. The mortgage process went smoothly and I figure we were probably within a week of final approval. Then we moved on to the home inspection.

I have participated in home inspections before and they can be very fascinating, sometimes even scary. I recall an inspector finding out that the main electrical panel was ungrounded, that the clean out for the sewer line was 30% buried in concrete, and that some of the wiring was so old that the insulation was cracking, all in the space of less than five minutes. Since the house I was looking at this past month was only 20 years old I did not expect to find problems. I was wrong.

There is something about the inspection process that opens your eyes to defects. Even defects the inspector doesn’t point out to you become obvious. Issues began to accumulate rapidly. On the outside we discovered that the garage door was showing signs of weathering near the ground. I considered this a small defect but one that would require attention as soon as the weather permitted it. The brick walkway was improperly installed and the bricks in the center were significantly lower than on the edges. This would require what amounts to completely rebuilding the walkway. I had not noticed this before.

Walking around the house we studied the way in which the deck was attached to the house but a complete examination would require removing boards from the deck in order to get a good look it. The presence of dirt, pine needles, and moisture along the line where the deck connected to the house suggested potential issues. The inspector pointed out that some of the nails holding the deck to the house were loose and could be pulled out by hand. He didn’t need to explain why this might be. The kick plate was essentially in contact with the deck and unlike the deck is not made of pressure treated wood. This became an issue on the other end of the house where we discovered that the kick plate was completely rotted out and showed evidence of insect damage, probably carpenter ants. Without tearing out parts of the house there was no way we could determine how far the rot had progressed. I won’t bore you with all the details nor do I want to give the impression that everything was bad. The heating system was excellent as was the electrical work.

At the end we decided against proceeding with the purchase and that was that. In the meantime the house in the adjacent town with which I had fallen in love and on which I would have made an offer had sold. It was a little more expensive but the taxes were 40% lower. With no additional houses coming on the market we decided we might as well wait until spring. After all there was nothing happening in the economy to suggest that the market was going to abruptly turn around and now that we are in April of the following year we can see that we judged correctly.

At the moment there are too many things going on and so looking for a house will have to wait until at least mid-May or perhaps longer.

The Law of Conservation of Hair

2009-05-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

Every now and then my thoughts drift back to my distant past. Maybe this is a symptom of an aging mind running out of synapses or something; but for whatever reason it happens with increasing frequency with the passage of time. These moments are usually fleeting but sometimes these recollections lead somewhere as happened very recently when I began thinking about childhood haircuts.

My Mom used to take my brother and I to LaSalle’s Barber Shop on Elizabeth Avenue near the corner of New Point Road. Just to the left as you entered the shop was a barber chair in the shape of a small car for their youngest customers. Slightly older kids got to sit in a regular barber chair but with a seat that was supported by the arms of the chair so that the barber could cut your hair without having to bend over. Kids who fulfilled their obligation of sitting still while the barber completed his work were rewarded with a Tootsie Roll Pop®. If this doesn’t sound like a major motivator you must consider that today’s Tootsie Roll Pop® is little more than a scale model of the original. Candy back then was bigger, cheaper, and better tasting. So what else is new?

I am not planning on discussing how things were better or worse back then. I am going to talk about hair. As a kid I had plenty of it especially when you consider that I lived in a world of crew cuts that didn’t yet know of the existance of the four guys who would eventually call themselves the Beatles and change hair styles for an entire generation. During most of my life the hair would grow like gangbusters and become a part of the heaps of swept up hair on the barbershop floor. It is a never changing fact of life just like the way prices always increase by about the amount of your last raise.

When I was in my twenties my then girlfriend asked me to grow a beard. Facial hair turned her on and I suspect it tickled in just the right way at exactly the right times. She eventually left my life but the beard remains. (Useful Hint: You can hide a lot of flaws under a layer of whiskers.)

Over time the beard grew in heavier and more manly. That’s when I noticed that my hair was beginning to thin slightly in the spot where it usually does on most men. It’s a never ending process; and to tell you the truth I never bothered keeping track. But like all the relentless and gradual changes that follow the aging process the lack of hair eventually became much more noticeable.

Among my more noteworthy observations was that my beard had become fuller and drifted into an equilibrium condition where it only changes color. The hair on my head continues to get more sparse and I definitely see the day where I will be bald on top. What is amazing is that as the hair disappears on my head, new strands of hair miraculously appears somewhere else. I have become acutely aware of the hair growing inside my nose, on my stomach, and on my back. Even my ears are beginning to sprout hairs.

All of this leads me to consider the possibility of a new natural law. Am I observing the effects of the law of conservation of hair? Indeed it seems like the amount of hair on my body is a constant. Even though it freely moves from places I want it to places I don’t want it, the actual quantity seems to remain constant. By quantity I mean mass. The new unwanted hairs tend to be thicker and more massive so that each one is equivalent to three or four cranial hairs.

Seriously though, the changes taking place on my head are common to the male of the species which means there must be a driving force behind it all. I suspect this process is entropically driven. Even though my hair previously grew neatly in well defined areas, it now grows like weeds in an abandoned lot. The body is hell bent on redistributing its hair supply more evenly at the expense of places like the head. It is not unlike the many attempts by governments to redistribute wealth that invariably looks as if they had modeled their country’s economy after the body of an aging man.

Even the Machines Are Against Me

2009-05-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

I have been absent for 9 months, truly a pregnant pause. So where have I been and what have I been doing? The short answer is everywhere and everything. At least that is how it feels.

During the past year I have seen four family members experience hospitalization, two experience unemployment, and one experience death. The company for which I work has been forced to make significant changes that include eliminating many jobs. Those of us remaining must work harder and smarter in order to maintain the profitability on which our survival depends. That means the professional staff must work longer hours when necessary. Indeed I have put in my share of 44-48 hour weeks during the past year.

The political climate has been an irritation too. Our nation has enjoyed few encouraging signs during the past twenty years and things continue to worsen. I lived through the Nixon years and remember how people reacted to his use of power. I now know Nixon was an amateur compared to the people in charge now. For the first time in my life politics is becoming time consuming. But let’s save that topic for another day.

I have also had to do battle with my old nemesis the computer. In one instance I think it may have been my fault and I learned a lot from the experience. For example I learned the value of my Norton Save and Restore program that allowed me to restore the entire system after I crashed it. I was lucky and did not lose any data. And so for the past several months in addition to being otherwise occupied I was also dealing with a rather strained relationship with my computer.

Shortly after the new year started I began to notice that Internet Explorer was slowing down. Initially I blamed my internet provider but when I checked Windows Task Manager I observed that the page file usage was about 500MB higher than normal. The standard rebooting sequence temporarily cured the problem but over time the usage would again increase and sometimes exceed 1GB. This is kind of like watching the temperature gauge go up on your automobile.

This is the first time I have experienced problems with IE7 and I have generally been quite content with its performance. An attempt to use IE8 late last year was a disaster for pretty much the same reason and so I returned to IE7. Part of me thinks that IE8 made permanent changes in the system and that is now affecting the performance. I solved the problem by switching to Firefox which cured all of the computer resource issues but there are IE features I miss. It is much easier to manage cookies with Internet Explorer and my Firefox does not allow me to change bookmark icons or at least I haven’t figured out a way to do it.

For some reason all the computers in my life have become more problematical during the past several months. My employer leases Dell computers and the most recent generation machine is somewhat buggy. For example one of the computers is connected to both our GC-MS (gas chromatograph with a mass spectrometer detector) and the headspace analyzer with a 40 position auto sampler that allows us to run samples overnight when the instrument would otherwise be idle. The old computer worked flawlessly but the new one keeps disconnecting the auto sampler. Fortunately most of my runs have been on single samples, but at some point I will have to request the services of our IT department to correct the problem. I would have called them already but I know they are currently dealing with other more critical issues due to a switch in the Enterprise Resource Planning software the company is using along with the integration of two previously separate companies.

Naturally the problem is sometimes unrelated to the computer hardware. Recently, the installation of service pack 3 for XP caused the communication between the PC and a digital camera on our microscope to cease. Apparently the drivers for Firewire were changed in the service pack. Imagine being the company receiving phone calls from hundreds of customers who want to know why their digital cameras suddenly stopped working. The company supplied an executable file to make the necessary changes and all is well again.

Just a few weeks ago I clicked on my Mathcad icon to start the program and saw the little hourglass appear for about two seconds and then nothing. The program simply would not open no matter what. The only change anyone had made on my computer was loading Chemdraw. I do not know of any issues with having Chemdraw and Mathcad both on the same computer but I can not think of anything else. I called IT and we re-installed Mathcad. It didn’t work. Finally I asked if it would be easier to take the computer and just start from scratch since all my files were backed up. This is pretty extreme but it worked.

I won’t bore you with the story about the security dongle that stopped working and ultimately cost me and my employer about 20 hours worth of productivity. Neither will I tell you right now about the crumby performance I am currently suffering through with my internet provider. I won’t share my negative experiences with the Microsoft Vista on my laptop because I haven’t spent enough time with it to have a problem. Either that or it isn’t as bad as everyone says. We’ll see.

I Think, Therefore I'm Here

2008-08-11T18:55:00.000-07:00

During my life I have experienced the excitement of starting a new job, of moving hundreds of miles to a new home, and of leaving bachelorhood for the joys of marriage. All of these changes resulted in an improvement of my life. More importantly these changes were under my control, demonstrating clearly to me that a combination of hard work and intelligent decisions will yield good results.

I consider myself quite fortunate. I enjoy my profession and am still happily married after over a quarter century. I sit here typing this in a comfortable home reassured by the knowledge that I have enough in my savings to survive the kind of economic upheavals I am most likely to confront. Would I change anything? Mostly not, but why waste time speculating on what might have been different. Life is not over yet and I still have time to both learn and to achieve something meaningful. So why am I writing all this in a blog that no one reads?

I haven’t bothered to check the statistics on how many blogs currently exist but I am sure the number exceeds the number of volumes to be found in most libraries. Given that, what is the probability that someone will stumble upon my little piece of cyberspace? I am sure the odds are against it. Observation reveals that most bloggers form little cyber-communities and read one another’s blogs. Joining a cyber-community is simply surrendering to the premise that people will read your blog if you read theirs. The odds are against me finding a cyber-community that shares my interests and values; but I might get lucky. Still, there is the hope that someone will enter the right combination of words in their search engine and stumble upon my blog.

I confess I have no idea why I continue to write here. As I have previously alluded to maybe I think I am good at writing and need an outlet for my creativity. I suppose I just want to put my two cents in even if my opinion represents only one part per billion in the vast ocean of pointless opinions polluting the internet. I fear that most of us on the internet never rise above the noise.

If you are reading this, thank you. If you can find anything positive amongst my ramblings feel free to leave a comment even if it is nothing more than a note indicating that you visited. Don’t be shy about disagreeing with me. As President Johnson once said, “If everyone in a room is in agreement, one person must be doing all the thinking.” That may not be the exact quote but it certainly reflects the spirit of what he said. If you only hang around people with whom you agree you will develop a very narrow view of the world around you.

Whether anyone reads this or not is irrelevant. I do this for me. When I write something I question it. Sometimes I spend hours thinking about what I have written only to find out that I changed my mind. Thinking can do that. Thinking can also keep you out of trouble. I think I will have more to say about this the next time.

The Global Warming Kerfuffle ~ Part 2

2008-08-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

In the world of science one always does a thorough literature search before investing time in a project. As the saying goes, we don’t want to re-invent the wheel. That said, I have discovered an excellent review of Global Warming by a fellow named James A. Peden whose resumé can be viewed at the end of the review. Honestly, Mr. Peden has done a much better job than I would have done and I think his work reflects a thorough understanding of the topic.

I urge you to read this review completely and attempt to understand the basic principles since there are many politicians and businessmen who are depending on you remaining ignorant.

The Global Warming Kerfuffle ~ Part 1

2008-05-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

I have been following the global warming debate for a long time even if until recently it has been rather one sided. In the 1990s I believed that the potential for global warming as a result of the greenhouse effect was a real concern. The science seemed to make sense and it was evident that eventually it would become a problem. I must confess I am no longer so sure; therefore I thought it might be fun to look at global warming from all angles and see what we find.

Working through this topic is not going to be easy. The amount of information and data is not trivial. Consider for a moment the concept of measuring global temperatures. How many data points do you need and where do you take your measurements. Since you can not take measurements everywhere all the time you are forced to take a sample. Suppose you decide to take temperature measurements every hour at a thousand different stations. Would that be representative of the entire planet? Most of the earth’s surface is ocean so should most of our temperature measurements be made above the oceans? What I am leading up to is that before you can make any statements about your measurements, you have to prove that the method you use to make the measurements is valid. Then you have to prove that those measurements are representative of the entire planet within a margin of error small enough to detect significant differences over time with some degree of confidence. There is also bias to consider but I think we can let that go for another day.

The alarmists like to point to anecdotal evidence such as melting polar ice and destructive storms like Katrina to support their position. They predicted a horrific Atlantic hurricane season last year that never materialized. It would be very convenient to state that the melting ice proves global warming is occurring and equally convenient to state that the failure to correctly predict the hurricane season last year proves otherwise.

However, this is science and not politics. You can’t pick and choose the data you like or dismiss predictions that fail to happen. Science is a tough game and saying that the issue is settled because you have more people on your side is ludicrous. In the late 1800s the idea that the atoms in compounds like sodium chloride would dissociate into ions when dissolved in water was considered absurd. And yet, the 1884 thesis making this statement won its author Svante August Arrhenius a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1903.

I generally admire a person who supports their position with passion even if I disagree with them. Do I disagree with the idea of global warming? No. Do I disagree with global warming alarmists like Al Gore? Absolutely yes. When these zealots covered their ears with their hands and went, “La la la la…” to drown out those who disagreed with them I changed sides. What Al Gore and his followers is selling is not science. Some have called it socialism hidden in a cloak of environmentalism and maybe that is true. But that is not the issue here. What we need to sort out is the science part of global warming with neither the politics nor the religious fervor of the global warming activists.
If it turns out there is a problem then we think it through and try to find a solution that is both effective and affordable.

At the end of this exercise I may find myself doing a 180º turn on this issue provided the numbers shake out that way. As Richard Feynman once said, “Nature can not be fooled”.

First Amendment Rights

2008-05-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

During a recent visit to our public library I was treated to a remarkable spectacle that illustrates how one can remain illiterate while surrounded by books. While navigating amongst the bookshelves in the library I observed three boys, perhaps 13 to 15 years old, huddled around a library supplied laptop computer in the reference section.

Curious about what could render three adolescent boys motionless for so long I walked over until I could clearly see that they were watching a video showing a woman performing oral sex on some guy. Cartoons and comics always depict boys watching pornographic images with a wide eyed stare; and I am here to tell you it is real. They were truly spellbound by the visual candy in front of them and oblivious to the rest of the world. The slack jaw on the youngest boy suggests that his more experienced and learned friends were providing him with an important part of his education. When he starts dating we certainly know what will be on his mind all evening.

When I mentioned this to the librarian while checking out my books she reacted as if I had told her that no one had dusted the windowsills recently. She said something about it being the parents’ responsibility, that there wasn’t anything they could really do, and besides, and here it comes, it is protected by the first amendment. Can you imagine James Madison, pen in hand, facing Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and asking, “Do you think we need a new amendment to protect pornography or do you think the first amendment pretty much covers it?”

You can’t help but wonder how adult men sworn to uphold the Constitution can give their seal of approval to McCain-Feingold, the type of law the first amendment was specifically designed to prevent, and still maintain a straight face as they justify their ruling that pornography, including virtual child pornography, deserves protection under the first amendment. If I sat on the Supreme Court and faced a case involving pornography I would point to the tenth amendment and throw the lawyers out of my court room.

As an aside even though I find flag burning to be far more offensive than pornography, I believe it is protected by the first amendment since it is a political statement. If someone is so passionate in their hatred of America that they feel a need to desecrate its flag they may do so without government interference. This can be a topic for another day; so let me get back to the original subject.

Within a week of this event the local newspaper carried a story about a teenage girl being inappropriately touched by a boy in the library. Now where do boys get such ideas? Parents would be wise to take note of how their children improve their minds in public libraries that give unlimited access to the internet. Most parents would probably agree that this is not the best utilization of library resources.

For those of you who think access to hard core pornography is appropriate for children just entering puberty I would ask that the libraries and education professionals make access dependent on learning something useful. Imagine a thirteen year old wanting to learn more about homosexual S&M techniques clicking their computer mouse and all of a sudden seeing a window pop up that says something like this:

The minor would then have to navigate through a series of screens that tests his general knowledge. Questions could require multiple choice or fill in the blank answers. It is alright that they can look up the answers on the computer or God forbid they might actually pick up a book to find an answer. We can even include some math problems. With a little luck the child will grow increasingly frustrated at having to run through this intellectual gauntlet and ask his parents to buy him his own computer for watching triple X videos.

Assuming other people besides me see this as a problem the next step is finding an acceptable solution where parents could exercise control without a physical presence. I think I have such a solution and may share it in a later post if I sense any interest.

Live Educated or Die

2008-04-20T19:35:00.000-07:00

Months having gone by since my last post, I am inclined to again blame a lack of inspiration. This however would be dishonest. The truth is that I spend too much effort trying to write about neutral topics. I try to stick to positive events in my life and keep things light. Unfortunately this is not working for me. I realize now that I am not cut out to write about what I did on my summer vacation. So let me draw my inspiration from the things that interest me.

In my last blog entry I expressed my appreciation to Norman W. Edmund for starting a business intended for people like me. I have since learned that Mr. Edmund advocates teaching the scientific method in our schools and believes our educational system has failed in this duty. I have a recollection that the scientific method was discussed in school at some point but I may have learned it on my own. In any event I agree that it is extremely important to teach students the scientific method and pound it into their tiny little minds over and over again every time they take a science course.

When I taught introductory chemistry in college I always spent one lecture talking about the scientific method and tried to show how it could be applied to familiar topics. By discussing the importance of verifiable facts and the power of experimentation I hoped that they would get some sense of how science works.

I am sorry to report that the experience was seldom rewarding though I did have a few students who exceeded my expectations. In general I suspect that Mr. Edmund is corrrect in his assessment of our educational system except that I think his indictment of the system is too narrow. I dream of a world where the ignorance is limited to the scientific method. If my experiences are representative of how prepared our students are when they enter college we are in big trouble. The word clueless comes to mind.

It really bothers me that our young people can’t do simple arithmetic, can’t find India or the Pacific Ocean on a globe, and have no idea who fought on either side during World War II. Worse yet, I get the impression that many students simply don’t care. This is troubling. Not knowing something is called ignorance. Being comfortable with that ignorance is called stupidity.

During a discussion once with some of my demented colleagues someone suggested a system guaranteed to motivate all students to work to their full potential. In any given class the student with the lowest year end grade is either shot or else hauled off to some labor camp. What better reason is there for studying hard and acquiring knowledge than one’s survival? Joseph Stalin could hardly improve on such a system.

I imagine many educators straightening up in their chairs and reading that last paragraph a second time. Some will upon honest reflection find themselves quietly agreeing with the concept. Yes, there must be more immediate consequences albeit slightly less extreme. Their students if they can read are completely puzzled by the paragraph and asking, “Who is Joseph Stalin?”

A Belated Thank You to Norman W. Edmund

2007-12-17T21:34:00.000-08:00

In 1963 I purchased a three inch reflector from Edmund Scientific Company. This telescope included a simple fork type equatorial mount on a wooden tripod, a simple finder scope, an eyepiece that provided a magnification of 60×, and a Barlow lens in case I needed more magnification.

The telescope was delivered a few hours before we left for a two week vacation to Sussex County, New Jersey not far from Stokes State Forest. This being many years before the developers discovered the area, seeing was always excellent up there. During this vacation I spent many hours looking at planets and trying to find some of the objects listed in my dad’s Norton’s Star Atlas.

I was a real novice but quickly discovered the joys of astronomy. Double stars were new to me and though they seem somewhat boring to me now they were generally easy targets and provided me with lots of experience in finding objects in the sky. For those unfamiliar with the term, a double star is simply two stars whose images are so close together that they appear as one with the naked eye.

The excellent seeing and my youthful eyesight made finding the globular cluster M13 in Hercules a cinch. The ring nebula M57 in Lyra was more challenging, but I found it. I quickly learned to adjust my expectations since I was looking through a 3 inch telescope at objects that I had only seen before in photographs taken with enormous instruments such as the 200 inch telescope at Mt. Palomar.

Some time later I purchased a copy of Webb’s Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes which provided information about just about everything worth seeing using a small instrument. More and more astronomy filled my waking hours. The only books I read were on astronomy and I began to believe I would eventually make a career out of it.

In 1966 my dad recognized my passion for observing and decided to help me out with an upgrade. He drove me to the Edmund Scientific store in Barrington, New Jersey to buy the parts needed to upgrade to a 4¼ inch instrument. Our shopping cart included the mirror, mirror mount, a larger equatorial mounting, aluminum tube, diagonal mirror, new finder scope, and a rack and pinion focuser. I can’t be absolutely sure but I think this was the trip on which I purchased my very own updated Norton’s Star Atlas. This book still sits proudly in my bookcase and gets used at least monthly. But the real prize was getting to spend a few hours in the coolest store I had ever been in before or since.

Walking into the store I immediately noticed the hundreds of radiometers on my left with their rapidly spinning vanes making a pleasant tinkling sound. A few meters away the store had mounted a working World War II vintage Japanese periscope. Looking through it provided the prelude to a journey of discovery. An entire room filled with surplus items including aerial cameras, lenses, mirrors, magnets, and other stuff lay before me. Shelves and tables filled with one of a kind items cast their hypnotic spell over me. I still recall that trip to Edmund Scientific many years ago. I also recall when I took my own boys there. Even though their interests are very different from mine they still thought visiting the store was a marvelous experience.

Over the years I acquired dozens of items from Edmund Scientific and spent many hundreds of hours entertaining myself with them. Upon reflection I realize how influential all this exposure to the tools of science was to my choice of careers. I still have a lot of the things I purchased there including magnets, polarizers, tools, lenses, and books. I still use the meter stick that was a part of a very inexpensive optical bench bought there.
I am pretty sure Edmund Scientific changed the nature of their business not too long ago, selling off everything except their industrial optics business. Times change and business decisions are made for very good reasons. The important thing is that Edmund Scientific Company was there when I needed it. For this reason I am sending here and now a big thank you to Norman W. Edmund who founded the company that made my journey into science a little bit easier.

Comet 17P/Holmes

2007-11-30T22:36:00.000-08:00

I went outside tonight and checked out Comet 17P/Holmes. I found it just a little south of α Persei. With my 7×35 binoculars I observed a dimly glowing ball roughly a half degree in diameter. I reckon I just wanted to be able to say I saw it.

I also observed Comet Kohoutek back in 1973; but I needed a much larger instrument to see that since it was partially lost in the evening twilight. Using an 8 inch richest field telescope I was able to clearly make out the tail; so I knew with certainty that it was indeed the comet. Kohoutek was so spectacularly unimpressive compared to expectations that I didn’t dare miss it. And yes, over the years I have had many people ask me if I saw Comet Kohoutek.

My First Telescope

2007-11-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

Science has been a major part of my life since around 1962 when I bought my first telescope through the mail. I paid $3.95 or so to Criterion Manufacturing Company for a 26mm diameter objective, an eyepiece to give maybe 40× of magnification, and a series of concentric tubes that slide over one another to focus.

I spent the first hours after receiving my telescope examining everything that I could see from my bedroom window. I checked out the surrounding houses, birds, the IPI water tower, the railcars sitting on the nearby tracks, the Anheuser-Busch Brewery in Newark, and even the stones in the driveway next door.

By nightfall I was a practiced observer and trained my telescope on any and all celestial objects that looked interesting. Naturally, the moon was my first target and I was lucky to have nearly half a moon to look at. I had seen the craters before using my dad’s binoculars but now they looked so big, but less sharp. My dad pointed to a bright object in the sky and said, “That may be Saturn”.

Balancing the telescope on the porch railing I quickly discovered the advantage of a solid telescope mounting. Despite my best efforts the tiny image of Saturn danced constantly around the center of the field. Nevertheless, there was Saturn with its rings. That was all it took to wet my appetite for more.

At the time it didn’t occur to me to ask my dad how he knew this was Saturn. Since then I figured it out. He knew the stars reasonably well and simply knew that the bright object he was pointing out to me was not a star and had about the right brightness and color to be Saturn. Now, even I can do this easily.

As the weeks and months passed I learned about many aspects of observing that can only be appreciated by another observer. For example you learn to dislike the full moon. Not only does the full moon look relatively featureless through a telescope, but its presence in the sky pretty much destroys your chances of being able to see dim objects like nebulae or galaxies. I also began to suspect that telescopes are cloud magnets.

My original Criterion telescope is long gone but a few years ago I saw a slightly earlier version of this telescope for sale on eBay. I could not resist the temptation to buy it. It is almost an exact duplicate of the telescope I had and even has the odor of phenolic resin like my original one had. I have this telescope in front of me right now as a reminder of that life changing event.
I could probably think of more to say about this but I need to end now. I see something out the window and want to take a closer look.

Fatal System Error

2007-11-09T22:32:00.000-08:00

Mature people understand that automobiles can divine the existence of extra money in your wallet or bank account, even a secret Swiss account. Squirrel away five hundred dollars and the transmission breaks. Similarly, homes can detect the existence of free time. Plan to take an evening off relaxing with a good book and the spring for the garage door breaks, not a major job but time intensive enough to guarantee that you will just finish before bedtime.

Computers are neither motivated by money nor time. Computers strive to frustrate. Futhermore, computers seem to know when they have the upper hand and thus show no mercy.

After spending a day at work and teaching a class in the evening I came home to relax only to encounter an agitated wife directing me towards her computer where I faced a blue screen with the following message:

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Windows Logon Process system terminated unexpectedly with
a status f 0x00000407 (0x00000000 0x00000000)
The system has been shut down

Attempts at rebooting only confirmed the same message:

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Windows Logon Process system terminated unexpectedly with
a status f 0x00000407 (0x00000000 0x00000000)
The system has been shut down

I have a tendency to attribute most if not all computer problems to either a faulty operating system or else a defective hard drive. I used to ignore the operating system as a suspect but then SP2 came along for Windows XP; but that is a whole different story.

A part of me believed that this time it wouldn’t be the hard drive since I had recently backed up all of the computer’s files. Hard drives only quit when you don’t back them up, right?

It is in my nature to try the simple things first despite low probabilities of success. Therefore I used the F8 key and tried booting up in safe mode. I wonder why they call it safe? Is there a hidden command that boots the system up in unsafe or dangerous mode? There is also the option of booting up the system in safe mode with a command prompt, obviously a means of switching rapidly to dangerous mode if it is needed to fry incoming viruses. Neither of these options offered any relief for my wife’s digital habit. In my next experiment I tried to restore the system to the last good configuration. Good for who? This is a clever feature developed by Microsoft so that people experiencing problems similar to ours can restore their systems back to a point where the message on the screen will read:

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Windows Logon Process system terminated unexpectedly with
a status f 0x00000407 (0x00000000 0x00000000)
The system has been shut down

At this point I went to bed and offered my system for use in the meantime.

After coming home from work, eating, and preparing for the next night’s class I tackled the computer problem again. This time I pulled out the box of disks and books that came with the system and actually read them. I swear there are people out there who think these books and packages of disks are a part of the packing material and throw them out with the cartons. From my manual I learned that Dell furnishes a neat little feature on the back of their systems where four small lights come on when you power up the system and tells you that your hardware is functioning provided all the lights are green. Any combination containing one or more yellow lights means you have hardware problems. Our system only showed green lights, a good sign.

Next I tried the Dell diagnostics CD which provides some means of testing various parts of the system. I was pleased to see this work and I soon began running a bunch of tests that might explain the blue screen. Finally on the diagnostic testing of the hard drive we looked at the screen and saw:

IDE Disk Read Test
Error Code 0F00:0244
Msg. Block 93188711
Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected

and

IDE Disk Read Test
Error Code 0F00:0244
Msg. Block 93193861
Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected

Identical information was obtained during the IDE Disk Verify Test except the Error code is 0F00:1A44.

For whatever reason some small sector of the hard drive became corrupted and needed to be fixed. I figured this would be a good place to try out the Windows XP recovery console which can be reached by booting from the operating system CD. That was my next try.

Did I mention that while all this is going on my wife is sitting behind me asking, “Are we there yet?” or maybe it was “Will I have my computer tonight?”. Using the CD the system booted up and loaded drivers and whatnot until I reached the screen where you are given the choice of aborting, reloading the operating system, or hitting R to repair the operating system. I hit R and though expecting to see the recovery console, I was presented with a command prompt that asked which operating system I wanted to repair even though there was only one choice. I typed 1 and hit the enter key. The command prompt came back with something like:

C:\WINDOWS Administrator Password? or some such thing. I never entered a password on this system and my wife claimed she didn’t either. This made me suspect that a hacker might have figured out a way to get though our maze of firewalls and discovering a lack of any password put one in themselves effectively locking us out of our own computer. I tried hitting enter without typing any password and followed this up with a few educated guesses for a password. Microsoft only gives you three tries and then you are out.

Desperate, I organized all of the information I had and attempted to get into a real-time chat with a Dell representative. No luck. I then put everything into an email since they responded so quickly the last time I had used this service. I hoped that maybe Dell put some sort of default password into the system but I would have to wait until they replied the next day.

Wednesday started as any other morning and a check of my email indicated that Dell had not yet responded. After work and school I checked again and still no message from Dell. Lucky thing I found a copy of PC Disaster and Recovery at the college library. Here I learned that XP Professional has to have a password for the administrator account. Since I knew I didn’t enter one it had to be my wife who entered it, except she didn’t know she was entering the most important password of the system and didn’t keep a record of it. Is there a patron saint of lost passwords?

Anyway I decided to try some various passwords that might work especially since this password had to be entered before my wife discovered the importance of secure passwords. Now she comes up with passwords that might look like:

&tF89#b5N+

or some similar jumble of characters. I knew I only had three guesses per CD boot cycle so they had to be good guesses. My fourth guess was correct. I still can’t get over this!
Now at the command prompt I typed Chkdsk /r and hit enter. After about thirty minutes the display indicates that two repairs had been attempted. There is a temptation to fiddle with the boot section of the hard drive but as a scientist I know you should never make two changes at once. So I attempt with suppressed excitement to reboot the system normally. The seconds ticked and the old familiar desktop photo popped into view. From the cheering coming from over my shoulder I assume I did a good thing.

Writer's Block

2007-11-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

I suffer from writer’s block. I refer not of that malady where weeks go by and not a word gets written; but of one so great that years go by without a single sentence surviving long enough to be read by anyone other than the author. Why is this?

Reflecting upon my early schooling I treated reading as merely a means of acquiring information about science, particularly astronomy. I loved science, mathematics, and geography. English, history, and art didn’t excite me the least bit. I don’t recall much about any writing I did before high school which is probably fortunate.

My tenth grade English teacher once asked me what I intended to do with my life and was astounded to learn that my plans did not include a writing career. This may have boosted my ego but I never seriously thought of myself as having anything even close to superior writing abilities. During my senior year at high school the junior and senior classes were required to write a major term paper worth one-third of the last marking period’s grade. When the papers were returned the teacher explained with some fanfare that out of a couple of hundred papers only two were deemed worthy of an A and one of them was in our class. When she announced that it was me I could hear the muted, “him?” that seemed to come from all directions at once. I am not sure but there might have even been a muted, “me?” buried in there somewhere. I still scratch my head over that one.

Once in college things changed. My first paper was returned with a C+ and several critical comments. The only one I remember is, “You’re putting me on”. I had never been graded on something so subjective and wasn’t sure how to proceed. I read the paper a few times and discovered one of its major failings. It was as boring as an insurance seminar.

As the semester progressed I struggled to satisfy my professor and put additional effort into writing my assignments. I gradually improved my writing and soon saw an A on each and every paper I produced. Once or twice he gave me an A+ along with some very complimentary comments. After that I had little difficulty writing, simply assuming it was good. The following semester I breezed through another English class managing to impress the professor not only with my writing skills but also with my ability to write about ideas that were compatible with his.

I eventually took a course allowing me to try my hand at science fiction. The course required quite a bit of reading and even though it was sprinkled with some of what I call science fantasy, I enjoyed it. Understanding science and possessing a vivid imagination gave me a distinct advantage when the time came to write essays. While others wrote essays containing ideas even more lame than those found in an old Lost in Space episode I merrily composed short stories that frequently poked fun at others’ ignorance of science. Compared to the rest of the class I must have shined like a beacon of hope to the professor who suffered through long hours of boring and pointless stories by people whose only exposure to science came in the form of TV programs like Star Trek.

After college I concentrated on chemistry and physics letting creative writing fall by the wayside. Employed as an industrial chemist, little opportunity presented itself for creative writing though some might dispute that. It is very tempting to employ creative writing to de-emphasize poor or incomplete data. I prefer to maintain intellectual honesty both because it is the right thing to do and because it is often soon discovered. Maybe someday I will write about some of the more blatant intellectual dishonesty I have witnessed.

Now more than forty years since my tenth grade English teacher asked me about my career plans I tried to play with creative writing again. I attempted to present chemistry in a new and refreshing manner but found I couldn’t even get the first paragraph completed. My vocabulary had evaporated and everything I wrote looked amateurish. Even now as I read what I have written so far, I have a profound sense of disappointment.

I am embarrassed to admit that after comparing technical reports I wrote over a decade ago to recent ones I can detect a significant degradation in quality. Am I getting lazier or more careless as I age or am I observing the ravishes of age on my mind? More importantly, can I reverse the trend?

So dear reader I hereby give myself a C+ and hope you do not feel I am putting you on. I’ll try to do better the next time.