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?"
Management Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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:Let them have explosives and biological weapons (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Management Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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"
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.
Comment removed (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!
A great new age (Score:3, Insightful)
Shit...
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.
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.
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.
So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sufficiently backward education makes technology indistinguishable from magic?
Re:Laziness & the Government (Score:2, Insightful)
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...
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.
Software is next (Score:1, Insightful)
It's easy for me to imagine a day when knowing how to access hardware directly (OMG! I wrote a driver) could be seen as subversive. Or using a compiler that can do more than a few 1,000 lines of code may be useful for making fancy apps that can do things that people might not be able to wrap their minds around. Actually, it's probably not safe to give people technical documentation at all- we don't want people to be able to write software that could maybe, potentially do something bad or not understandable by someone with an 80 IQ.
It realls seems as if you're not happy just waking up, driving to Wal*Mart for work and being yet another consumer of crap that the government is going to make some laws to prevent you from actually understanding and exploring the world we live in. God forbid we find something other than buying a box fan for $8.99 that may actually be intellectually satisfying.
Re:That's right, blame the chemicals (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Yet another example of the "terrorism" catch-al (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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?
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...
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:great article (Score:3, Insightful)
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 only two that matter). If an adult wants to buy something with which they can blow their hands off or quite possibly kill themselves - Well, my friend, they need go no further than Walmart. If, however, someone wants to actually learn something in the process of blowing themselves up, Wallyworld doesn't accomodate that.
Re-run (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, americans just don't like thinkers.
Tom
Re:good morning ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Even more importantly, the use and development of "grey matter".
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:Let them have explosives and biological weapons (Score:3, Insightful)
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 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.
Re:A great new age (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Management Culture (Score:2, Insightful)
Do we want to live in a society that needs to justify science in order to give it permission to exist? Science is its own justification, sometimes it will lead to useful tools to fight an enemy, but more often it won't. This article is about a return to a society based on fear of the unknown, a society which will dictate what is normal and require permission from the central authority for anything that is abnormal.
We can no longer rely on liberals to fight for true freedom. Liberals have won the right to dress funny in public schools, have sex with whomever they want and read and write about everything that they care about. But everything else is slipping away.
It is Your fault.
Science cannot truly exist in a society that does not respect the Right to bear arms. Science is a weapon.
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, they are not afraid to handle things. Nowadays, many programs eliminate the danger from the curriculum, and thus eliminate the training in the form of the mindset required to handle very bad stuff. I've handled some of the most toxic substances man has ever known, but believe me, when I did, that was not the first time I handled something that could kill me instantly.
The indoctination that has happened, imo, is one of 'safety first' according to some external definition. The problem is that the modern world tends to define the acceptable level as "no risk," which is impossible. A properly educated and trained chemist (either by formal training or by many years of garage experience, etc) knows how to weigh the risk and manage it. Talk to some of your older colleagues, those trained in the 1950's if you can pin them down, and ask them about the differences in how chemistry is taught today vs. then.
The dilution of education is a bit alarming. This safety aspect is but one example.
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.
Re:Management Culture (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:good morning ! (Score:2, Insightful)
OMG, teh Rox!!!
Everything can be used as a deadly weapon against an individual, not everything can be used to slowly poison mass numbers of poeple quite as well as radioactive materials with proper placement. Here in the old US of A, pot farms survive for years pulling in thousands of dollars a month in power bills for their lights and irrigation systems because power companies *gasp* are a business making money and don't give a shit, as long as Joe-Bob Hooch-Farmer pays his power bill that is.
Of course I remember the story of the radioactive boy scout [amazon.com] who, in an attempt to provide a really neat experiment for a science project, damn near killed his family and neighbors out of common household radioactive products. Of course, he had to collect mass amounts of radioactive materials on his own instead of just buying them over teh intraweb.
Re:good morning ! (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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?
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?
What if the Government doesn't like you? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 be psychopaths will also find ways to kill/maim/manipulate others. The solution is to arrest and try those people if they do happen to do their worst, and either jail them for a long time or execute them.
-b.
Re:Wisdom follows, pay attention (Score:1, Insightful)
Now that we've gone past the usual leftist revisioning of the 2nd amendment because they're scared of anything phallic shaped, like bullets, we can continue talking about things that go boom.
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 very intolerant and shortsighted. OMFG! The horror! Someone might have an opinion that differs from yours! OMFG! We can't have that!!
Personally, I'm an atheist. I'm just not threatened by people who believe in spaghetti monsters or whatever. What matters to me is that in addition to believing in spaghetti monsters, they also have the educational background to make our society work. The situation that we have right now is *worse* than belief in spaghetti monsters.
If you're worried about evolution not being taught, let me put your mind at ease. For vouchers to work, there would have to be yearly standardized tests, and any school where kids are not being taught evolution would not be allowed to take vouchers. Such a school would go out of business. What this means is, it would absolutely impossible for a school to refuse to teach evolution. What this means is, I could guarantee you that no matter what school a kid went to, they would receive an education that met a certain standard - guaranteed. But I know, that doesn't "put your mind at ease" because I know that the real problem here isn't your deep heart-felt concern for our educational system, the real problem is your intolerance (of people who are wrong).
I imagine you as the pilot of an airplane with engine trouble. The copilot (that's me) points out that we could land at Microsoft International Airport, but you angrily shake your head. "HELL NO! I'M NOT LANDING AT NO MICROSOFT NOTHING! FORGET IT! THAT'S OUT OF THE QUESTION!!" And while you're hemming and hawing and screaming about your own bright shining self righteousness the plane crashes. Congratulations. Great job.
The US public education system is an abject failure. That's a fact. And you wont even consider solving the problem.
How about this. What if we instituted vouchers along with the requirement, "for a school to receive voucher money, it cannot teach any kind of religious course."
I bet you'd oppose that too. And that basically proves my point.
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.