Breaking the Mold

I don’t have cable, but I recently got to watch the two latest episodes of AMC’s hit show, Breaking Bad by watching them online. First of all, I think AMC should look into Hulu, which is where I’m doing most of my TV watching these days. For me, it’s about scheduling more than anything. I’m sorry, but TV has never been a priority. I’m willing to watch your shows and the ads that come with them, but only during those times I feel like it. Anyway I digress.

I loved the first season, and couldn’t wait for more. Watching the second season, it looks like I can expect to get a similar kick out of the new episodes. There’s a strong element of suspense, and while normally the “fish-out-of-water” theme is cliché, the characters here are convincingly out of their depth in ways that make sense and take it beyond a mere gimmick. It really does an outstanding job of storytelling.

I get a special kick out of watching it. Partly it’s the familiarity of the language and ideas, and the fantastic aspect of it. Take for example the use of hydrofluoric acid to dispose of a body. I would absolutely want nothing to do with the large amounts of HF used in real life, but it was an interesting thing to sort of fantasize about. Not that I fantasize about disposing of bodies in acid (much). It also sort of got me interested in the history of meth-manufacture to an extent that worries my friends a little. I won’t start making it of course, because I live in an apartment and I don’t want to lose my security deposit. Or get arrested. What I was surprised to hear was that the Hell’s Angels did their methamphetamine production as a near total synthesis.

What this means is that they didn’t go out and buy Sudafed, which is very close to the structure for methamphetamine (including the “newer” Sudafed), but they actually went through the process of making it using more basic chemical components. I don’t know whether they were actually knowledgeable of theory, but it’s interesting to think about motorcycle gang chemists.

It’s great to have a protagonist that’s a nerd, and someone who is actually passionate about science t’boot. While selling drugs isn’t exactly noble,  we understand the motivations. All too often the scientist is part of the group of evildoers, the mastermind of some dastardly plot. Then Superman swoops in and punches his kidneys out. Even in other fiction where science isn’t involved, the nerds aren’t really there to save the day. Take the Harry Potter novels as an example. Harry Potter isn’t the best wizard in the group, or the most knowledgeable. Really Hermione should be doing all the ass-kicking, all Harry has going for him is luck of the deus ex machina variety and a sidekick who’s mostly comic relief. Fortunately, Breaking Bad rises above that tradition.

Sure, there are elements of the story that need work. Especially the son, who is really underdeveloped as a character, and doesn’t seem to serve much purpose. What Breaking Bad really has going for it though, besides a kick-ass premise, excellent acting, and a mastery of suspense, is that we’re given a main character that we actually give a damn about. At it’s core it’s really the time honored story of the working stiff who has to take drastic measures to save his family.

Uub Gets Its Birth Certificate

Old news, but nonetheless worth commenting on, element 112, known by it’s “placeholder” name Ununubium will soon have a proper name. The team at GSI who synthesized the element proposed the name Copernicium with the symbol Cp. the name is pending approval, but the chances are it will be accepted without much fuss. Traditionally, IUPAC gives discoverers a lot of leeway in naming and name like Copernicium is unlikely to raise serious objections.

When Glenn Seaborg and Edwin McMillan produced plutonium in a lab in December of 1940 they were given the opportunity to name the new element and propose its symbol, the one or two Latin letters that would serve as shorthand for the element worldwide by scientists speaking all languages. The name of the element was named after what is now no longer the ninth planet of our solar system, and Glenn Seaborg proposed Pu as a tame joke. It was a play on the exclamation “Pee-yew!”. He did not expect IUPAC to approve the symbol, but it passed without any so much as a murmur.

People who have looked a periodic table in the last decade may look with puzzlement at the various elements near the bottom of the periodic table without formal names. The reason for this is that there is some debate over which research team discovered the elements first and whether the elements were actually discovered in the first place. The elements are made in miniscule amounts, are highly unstable and decay very quickly. Part of the difficulty in synthesizing the new element is getting evidence of its existence. This can be done by detecting decay products in statistically significant quantities. (If any nuclear chemists out there are reading this and think I’ve gotten anything wrong, please correct me.) The level of relative uncertainty over discovery has lead to at least one case in particular of alleged fraud.

IUPAC seems to have finally decided that in the case of element 112 that the scientists at GSI have priority it its discovery. I think it’s great to have be alive for the naming of a new elements. The size of atomic nuclei is severely limited by the physics governing the particles in the nucleus, and there will come a day when we will no longer be able to create new elements. Some people argue that we’re there already.

Spring Cleaning

Having not written in this blog for a little bit, I'm stuck with a number of tiresome chores to bring it back to some shadow of its former glory. Unfortunately, there are some cobwebs. I had to go in and delete a number of Japanese language spam comments, at least one of which was pornographic. Nothing like unknowingly clicking onto a triple-X site in a very public place to bring some color to your cheeks.

So I now, even though all of my former commenters have disappeared (come back!) I have had to enable comment moderation for posts older than 10 days, and have activated a verification word. Annoying, I know, but it's only until this blog gets happenin' again.

Stop the Presses!

Google is going to compete with Microsoft.

Oh... it's on now. It's on like Donkey Kong!

The Link-ness Monster

I’ve seen any number of things on the ‘tubes today that makes me want to share:

The 114th Skeptic’s Circle. (Bonus: Stuff on Alchemy!)

Azmanam’s Chemical Dictionary is now available from the ScienceBase servers. I strongly commend him on his effort and fully expect it to become a gold standard by the time he’s done tinkering with it. For non-chemists out there, ever write something using specialized language in your office suite and have a red squiggly line under every other word? Well that’s what happens way too often if you use words like “azonide”, “solvation”, “dimethylmercury”, or “1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine- 2,6(3H,7H)-dione” I highly recommend adding it to your browser’s spell-checking repertoire as well.

The European Space Agency is going to make its own manned space vehicle! This is a Good Thing(TM) because with the space shuttle being retired, the only people going into space will have to rely on the Cosmodrome at Baikonor. Not that I’m paranoid about the Russians hogging space, but if we can’t be a two planet species, can’t we at least be a two launch pad one?

Speaking of the Russians… good news: We’re working together to slash our nuclear arsenals. Bad news: People are still clinging to antiquated notions about the utility of missile shields.

Finally, since I showed you how to make iodine in the last post, now you need something to do with it. Well, if you’re still waiting on the book. You might want to try this (taking all appropriate precautions of course):

Quick and Easy Home Iodine Tutorial

I’ve been wondering a long time when the DEA will stop chasing its tail and stop all the pointless restrictions that make life harder for the home chemistry experimenter. This video just goes to show that the worst thing the DEA can think to do in terms of legislation, is to mildly inconvenience no one. Someone over there needs to get their head out of their ass and realize that not every civilian out there with a test tube and half a brain is cooking up some meth. Restricting reagents isn’t even half the battle, and if it is, then you’ve already lost.

Any half-way clever sophomore organic chemistry student could probably think of a dozen mechanisms (of admittedly varying efficacy, hazard, and yield) to make the stuff using reagents that wouldn’t raise anyone’s eyebrows even purchased in industrial quantities. I’m not an advocate for getting people hooked on crystal meth, but I get so pissed off at pointless DEA restrictions I get strongly tempted to publish a complete guide to circumventing all of them. Anyway, the video is a nice little tutorial on making iodine, and I have the book, an excellent resource for students starting out in experimental chemistry:

WANT. BADLY.

I’ve never fancied myself a book collector, though I do have a handful of rare/out-of-print/autographed/limited-edition books of very limited monetary value. Believe it or not, they’re all either things given to me, or impulse buys. This, however, is the one book I can honestly say I really want to own.

It’s particularly funny because my interest in flammables and energetic materials is fairly constrained to not accidently making them go boom in the lab and enjoying fireworks/Mythbusters. Still, something about the book intrigues me, perhaps it’s the fact that a book like this can actually go out of print! Unbe-fucking-lievable.