This has been a very interesting past few days. The drive from the Bluegrass country to here was dreadful, with rain and wind almost every step of the way. My right shoulder blade still is tense from it. But that is no matter.

I could not get to sleep tonight, and it is 9:00 AM Eastern whilst I compose this. Most of this post is just random obversations, but ones observed with gratitude and love. In no particular order are listed the things and people (mostly people) who are dear to me, any a few of the reasons why.

Mrs. Translator, the love of my life. To describe why would take several hundred posts, so I will not even try to do so. Let it be said that I do not deserve such as she is, and that she could do much better than to have chosen me. However, I resolve to do better by her. Her purity of heart and deep compassion, coupled with unconditional love for me is more than I could dream of as a gift of manna.

Eldest Son, with the soul of a poet and the mind of a scientist. He has good wit, and a kind word for everyone. His gentle strength is an inspiration. He also wrangles alligators (graduate school work, for science). What a guy!

Middle Son, with a bizarre sense of humor and keen intelligence. When he gets going, he is hard with which up to keep. One of these days all of you will see him on the TeeVee as a late night host. He is that good when he is in fine form.

Youngest Son, likely the most sensible one of us except for Mrs. Translator. Witty, smart, and extraordinarily energetic, he is thinking about going into culinary studies. As many of you know, I have the honor of hosting What’s for Dinner from time to time, so this is no surprise.

Mrs. Translator’s mum, the last surviving grandparent of the boys. She is getting feeble, but still was able to come and have dinner last night, and participate in the conversation that is even better than the food. She is as sharp as a tack, and can be really funny. I cherish her presence.

My parents, though both are now gone. Through them I learned things, both for good and for ill. You have to remember that my roots are in rural Arkansas, and their racist attitudes sort of made me think another way. On the other hand, I never saw either of them be cruel to anyone, but they had their own thoughts. I believe that this discontinuity between their thoughts and actions gave me cause to think about things. They were not evil, just products of their generation of poor white folks.

My grandmother on mum’s side. She lived to be 101 years old, and was a classic evangelical, except that she had a heart. Mrs. Translator and I both just about fell out of our chairs many years ago when she was visiting and some news item was on the TeeVee talking about gay issues. She said words to the effect of, “Well, if that’s the worst thang that them is doin’ I don’t thank that Jesus will hold it against ‘em.”

My granddad on my dad’s side. He was a character. He was in his eighties when he taught me to drink coffee and smoke Prince Albert cigarettes when I was five. What a guy! I was the only kid that he ever liked. Hit my profile for some stories about him.

My friends, both peer and their parents. I keep in touch with several that I have had since childhood. The parents are almost all gone now, but will live in my thoughts until I expire.

This community. I was in a very bad way at one time, and I think that the kind words and the expressions of support had a lot to do with me being alive to write this at present. There are no words to express my appreciation of this support. More than once have I been offensive, and still am welcomed. I strive to be better, and appreciate the forgiveness.

Now, for things other than people for which I am thankful.

Science. It shows us the way to a better understanding of the universe. It is not perfect, but the best that we have at present, and is continually refined. If not for it, we would be wearing animal skins and grunting instead of speaking.

Energy. I do not like to be cold, and fuel allows all of us not to be. I also like to go from place to place now and then, as do most of us. I really hope that we can do a better job at finding better, more sustainable sources before we choke each other to death with the byproducts. I am sure that we will.

The Who. Their music encouraged me through some tough times. I grieve that Keith and John are no longer with us, but Pete and Roger still are. They were a singular grouping of very talented people.

Gene Roddenberry. His futuristic and optimistic outlook on human nature, along with his vivid imagination, stimulated and still stimulates both science and the humanities. Think of a world devoid of Star Trek and its offshoots, and I will posit that such a world is much duller than this one is.

There are many others, such as the luck of being healthy, not being homeless, and having enough to eat. But I do not wish to run this into a series.

Please join us here Sunday evening at 7:00 Eastern for a real series, called Pique the Geek, a science and technology post. This time it will be part three of three in kitchen materials for cooking, concerning plastics.

Warmest regards,

Doc

This was inspired by a comment by darthstar on a diary by Nex Horus. Here is the scenario: the campaign plane went down, with no loss of life nor serious injury, in a remote part of the lower 48, maybe, say Wyoming.

This is purely fantasy, but I attempt to include talking points that the Republicans use at every opportunity. For your pleasure, or distaste, here is the script just after McCain, Palin, Cindy, Todd, Hannity, Limbaugh, O’Reilly plus a neutral pilot climb out of the wreck.

O’Reilly: What happened? The damned liberal, socialist, communist, luffa hating bastards shot us down!

Pilot: No, actually we ran out of gas. Your group overestimated how far we could go with limited resources.

Palin: Are the clothes OK? I am glad that I left my kids back in Alaska on their own. At least they are not here in the wilderness! They know to be abstinent! And there is moose in the freezer!

A cold wind blows over their setting….

McCain: My friends, does anyone know how to start a fire? I have tried to start a fire for a long time, and just can not seem to do it. A fire is what we need here for the next several days, until we are rescued by a socialist rescue party.

Todd: Dude!

Limbaugh (away from the others, under his breath): thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, Damn! I dropped one in the snow! Thirty-nine, well, if we get rescued before tomorrow night, it will be OK.

Cindy: John, we have people to turn up the thermostats in our houses. Just call one of them to make it warmer!

Todd: Dude!

Hannity: You people just do not get it! Keith Olbermann put us here, and he is not an American. He is the reason that we are getting cold.

Pilot: We need to get some shelter. We need blankets. I suggest that we all get back in the plane and cover up with any cloth that we can find.

Sarah: NOT MY CLOTHES! Those are mine, mine, mine! No one can even see them until I am ready, not to mention to have them keep your inferior asses warm. Todd, find us a moose!

Should I keep going?

Warmest regards,

Doc

“The only bad coin is one I don’t have” (Translator, 2008). Actually, that is not really true. There are good and bad coins. The properties that constitute “goodness” differ depending on whether a coin is intended for circulation or for commemorative or bullion use. However, some of these characteristics are common to all types. (I have not covered commemorative coins in this series. They are legal tender coins struck usually for only one year, to recognize a specific event. I will add a picture of one in a bit).

The characteristics common to all good coins include a suitable alloy, an good design, and respectability. The latter might not seem important, but it is and I will give a couple of examples. In addition, sometimes the nature of these characteristics change with time.

Alloy is important for a couple of reasons. Until circulating coins became tokens in the United States in 1965, precious metal content was important. That is why silver and gold coins had reeded edges (for the most part). A reeded edge is the series of ridges on the edge of a coin, put there to prevent shaving tiny bits of gold or silver from the coin. It actually does not prevent it, but no one would accept coins with the reeding shaved, thus making the practice unprofitable for those who would try it. By the way, reeding was left on our dimes, quarters, and halves after the silver was eliminated just for tradition.

For circulating coins, the alloy has to be hard enough to resist wear for many years. The average life of a circulating coin is on the order of decades, so this is important. All US gold and silver coins for circulation have been alloyed with copper to harden the metal. Both gold and silver, in pure form, are extremely soft, wearing rapidly and bending easily. Pure gold and silver are completely unsuited for circulating coins. Most US coins are good in this respect, with two recent exceptions. One was the 1943 cent, which was zinc plated steel. The zinc coating was relatively soft and wore away rapidly. The other example is again the cent after 1982, being zinc plated with pure copper. The pure copper plating is thin, and pure copper is soft, so the coating tends to wear.

Hardness is not a factor for bullion coins, since they are not designed to be handled. The Mint produces two different pure coins, the gold Buffalo and the platinum Eagle series. The important factor for them is that the metal content is accurate and consistent.

Another important property is resistance to corrosion. This is more important for circulating coins, since they are often subjected to harsh conditions than bullion coins, but it is still somewhat important even for those. Almost all US circulating coins are good in this respect, with only a couple of exceptions. Again, the 1943 cent was bad, because after the soft zinc coating wore, the coin tended to rust. Even worse is the 1982 and up cent, because once the copper plating wears, the coin corrodes if it gets wet. Try this: Take a pre-1982 cent and a post 1982 one (in 1982 both kinds were made, so your results may be confusing if you use 1982 ones), nick the edges of each with a knife or file, and drop in a container of water and add a little salt. Come back in a couple of weeks and see which is better.

The bimetallic dimes and quarters are OK, but under harsh conditions they are more apt to corrode than the silver ones, but much more slowly than the zinc cents. I have several that have corroded to the point of being hard to recognize.

Here are pictures of corrosion damage to a bimetallic dime (left) and a copper plated zinc cent (right):

Design includes several factors. Obviously, an attractive design is desirable for a popular coin. More important are a couple of technical issues. Round, or approximately round, coins are better than shapes with sharp corners because sharp spots wear more quickly than round ones. Another design factor is the interaction between the designs on the obverse and the reverse. Some combinations are worse than others. The Flying Eagle Cent, the first small cent, suffered from this defect and was discontinued after only three years. The heavy design on the reverse interfered with the head and tail of the eagle on the obverse because of work hardening the allow. For the most part this is not too much of a problem with US coins.

Here is a picture of the Flying Eagle small cent. I think that it is a relatively attractive coin:

A much more common and severe design consideration, for circulating coins, is high spots that wear the fastest. Obviously, it is not possible to design an image with some relief, but some elements are more important than others. For example, if the date or denomination is the highest part of the surface, it will wear off first. The Indian Head five cent piece, although an attractive and popular coin, was one of the worst. It was so bad, in fact, that the reverse was redesigned the first year of production because “FIVE CENTS” on the reverse was the highest spot on the coin and wore badly. The dies were reworked to lower the relief. The date on the obverse also wears badly, but not as bad as the denomination. There are lots of Indian Head five cent pieces laying around, and many of them have the date worn completely away, making them worthless as collectibles. This consideration is not as important for commemorative and bullion coins, since they are not intended for circulation.

Here are pictures to illustrate what the Mint did to reduce the wear on the reverse. The first one is the one that gave trouble:

There are a couple of techniques that the Mint uses to reduce wear on critical areas. The first is in the design of the coin itself, protecting critical features by assuring that they are not high spots, like the example just given. The second is the process of upsetting, where a raised rim is applied to the coin. (This is done just before the image is struck). As far as I know, every US coin has an upset rim, with the notable exception of the $2.50 and $5.00 Indian Head gold pieces, and there were unique in that the image lettering on them were incuse, that is, struck as a depressed regions rather than raised regions. These are unique in US coinage history. Here are pictures of blank planchets (coins before striking) before and after the upsetting process:

Here are pictures of the incuse Indian Head Half Eagle:

Sometimes what is NOT on the coin becomes a design defect. The initial reverse of the Liberty Head five cent piece had only a “V” on the reverse to denote denomination. This became an issue when a deaf mute in Ney York took to gold plating them and passing them off as five dollar gold pieces. (He was acquitted of any crime by the way, because his attorney convinced the jury that, since he never tried to buy anything with them that cost more than five cents and could not hear or speak to answer questions, it was the mistake of the merchant to give him the $4.95 change). The Mint quickly modified the dies to add the word “CENTS” to the bottom of the reverse, in 1883, the first year of issue.

Here are pictures of the reverse before and after the modification:

Eye appeal is important, but not absolutely critical. However there have been some really horrible looking modern coins. The Eisenhower and the Susan B. Anthony dollars come to mind. On the other hand, the Walking Liberty half dollars and double eagles are just beautiful. Here are representative pictures of each, in order of mention:

I wish that we would get back to designs like the last two, at least now and then. Those would be exciting coins for me to examine.

Recognizablility is important for all coins, and critically so for circulating coins. That is one advantage of keeping the reeding on dimes and quarters, because the visually impaired can distinguish different denominations by tactile sensation. One of the big disadvantages of the Susan B. Anthony dollar was in size, color, and reeding it looked and felt like a quarter. The Mint has tried to make a dollar coin more acceptable to the public by changing the color and eliminating the reeding, but it is a historical fact that Americans just do not like dollar coins. Silver dollars were never really very popular, except now that they are collectors items. Unless the Treasury eliminates the dollar bill, a dollar coin will not fly in my opinion. Now, there is another reason for this, too: The Federal Reserve pays the Treasury only the cost of producing paper currency (about four cents per, regardless of denomination), but has to pay full face value for coins. In FY 2007 (the latest one for which I could find figures), 4,147,200,000 $1 bills were printed, so there is some economic incentive for the Fed not to push too hard.

Those are some of the factors that differentiate “good” coins from “bad” ones. For previous installments of this series, you can use these links:

Pique the Geek: The US Cent

A Primer on United States Coins, Part 1.5

A Primer on United States Coins, Part 2

A Primer on United States Coins, with Silver Content Value as of Today, Part 3

The US Mint Ran out of Gold Today (part 4 of a series on coins)

A Primer on US Coins, Part 4: Modern Coins

A Primer on US Coins #5: Bullion Coins – Final Update

I think that next time I will discuss the actual methods used to produce coins, unless someone has a better idea. Comments, questions, and illumination are always welcome.

Warmest regards,

Doc

(Sneak preview for Politicook members, one of the advantages of being on this site).

The United States is a recent entry in bullion coin production. England started producing bullion coins in 1489! The US started in 1986 with the Silver and Gold Eagles, with nominal face values of $1 up to $50.

Bullion coins are designed not to be circulated, but rather held for their intrinsic value. Except in rare situations, they have little collector value. One notable exception is the 1995W Proof Silver Eagle, worth around $5000. This is because only about 30,000 were minted, and Proofs for this series generally run in the hundreds of thousands.

Since bullion coins are not speculative, other than for their metal content, they are eligible for holding in tax sheltered retirement accounts, unlike collectible coins. Well know bullion coins from other countries include the Chinese Panda, the South African Krugerrand, and the Canadian Maple Leaf. There are others, but this series is about US coins.

As I said, the Silver Eagle (along with the Gold Eagle) was the first US bullion coin. It is 99.93% silver and 0.07% copper, thus higher in silver content than standard US coin silver at 90% / 10%. The coin is 40.6 mm in diameter and has a mass of 31.01 grams, working out to one ounce Troy of fine silver. Silver is today (23 October 2008) down to $9.35 per ounce Troy, according to Bloomberg.com. Unlike gold and platinum US bullion coins, only the one ounce size is minted.

This is a strikingly beautiful coin, since it uses the design that A. A. Weinman created for the Walking Liberty Half Dollar (see previous installments). The reverse is a rather nice heraldic eagle, hence the term Silver Eagle.

Both normal strikes and proofs can be purchased directly from the Mint or from dealers. Pawn shops are often pretty good places to find bullion coins.

Here are pictures of the coin (this one is a Proof, normal strikes are uniform, that is, the background and images are not in such contrast):

Obverse of US Silver Eagle
Designed by A. A. Weinman
1986 – Present

Reverse of US Silver Eagle
Designed by John Mercanti
1986 – Present

The United States produces two three series of gold bullion coins. The first series is called the Gold Eagle, and comes in four denominations (all of the dollar values are pretty much meaningless, but if the value of gold ever falls below face value, they will at least be worth that). They all have the same obverse and reverse (except for the size identification) designs and are 22 karat gold (91.67% gold, 5.33% copper, and 3% silver). The denominations are:

$5, 16.5 mm diameter, mass 3.393 g, which comes to 0.10 ounce Troy in fine gold. Today the gold in them is worth $71.07.

$10, 22 mm diameter, mass 8.483 g, which comes to 0.25 ounces Troy in fine gold. Today’s value is $177.68.

$25, 27 mm diameter, mass 16.966 g, which comes to 0.50 ounces Troy in fine gold. Today’s value is $355.35.

Finally there is the $50 one, 32.7 mm diameter, mass 33.931 g, which comes to one ounce Troy fine gold, worth $710.70.

Originally, only Proof strikes of these coins could be bought directly from the Mint, but regular strikes had to be purchased from dealers. The Mint had deals with several large distributors, and they in turn sold them to other dealers, who then sold them to the public. I do not know the politics behind that. If anyone does, please explain in the comments. This policy evidently has changed, since the online catalog from the Mint offers both proof and regular strikes to the public.

These coins are also very attractive. The obverse design is the beautiful Saint-Gaudens one used on the double eagle circulating coin (see earlier installments), arguably the most beautiful US coin design. The reverse is a nest of eagles. I post only pictures of the $50 one, since the others are identical except for denomination lettering and size. Here is the picture:

$50 Gold Eagle
Obverse designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Reverse designed by Miley Busiek
1986 – Present

The second gold series is recent and is designed to compete with the Canadian Maple Leaf, in that it is a 24 karat (0.9999 fine) gold coin, a first in US mintage. Since it is not intended for circulation, being very soft is not a disadvantage, and many investors prefer 0.9999 fine gold to alloy.

The coin is the design used on the Indian Head Five Cent piece from 1913 to 1938 (see earlier installments) by James Earle Fraser. It has a diameter of 32.7 mm and a mass of 31.11 g. This comes to one ounce Troy, worth $710.70 today. The mint also issues a coin of half the mass, but only in a special set. There is talk of doing the same insofar as smaller sizes go as is done with the Eagle series, but that has not yet happened.

Here is a picture of the coin:

$50 Gold Buffalo
Designed by James Earle Fraser
2006 – Present

The Mint could not keep up with demand for this coin recently and suspended sales in September of this year. With the price of gold easing, I look for them to get started again soon.

There is actually a third gold bullion series, but it will expire. In the last installment I talked about the Presidential Golden Dollar series, and there actually is a gold bullion companion series. These are half ounce Troy 0.9999 fine coins, worth $355.35 today. These coins have too many varieties to list pictures of them all, but are designed to honor the spouses of corresponding Presidential Dollars. I was unable to find the diameter of the coin, but its mass has to be 15.555 g, which is equivalent to 0.5 ounce Troy.

You historians are already saying, “But, but, but some Presidents had no spouse!”, and you are correct. In those cases, a depiction of Liberty from a coin design of the period in which the particular President served is used instead. The one set of pictures from this series that I include is from the one that corresponds to Andrew Jackson:

$10 First Spouse, Jackson’s Liberty
Obverse designed by John Reich (this design was originally on the Half Dollar during Jackson’s time)
Reverse designed by Justin Kunz
Series 2006 until we run out of Presidents

The last series of bullion coins that the United States produces is in platinum. This is a very complex series, with various reverses, differing from regular strikes and proof strikes, and four sizes. All are composed of 0.9995 fine platinum, and so are very soft. An aside about platinum:

Most people are familiar with platinum jewelery, which is very hard. Actually, this is normally a 90% platinum / 10% iridium alloy, and is indeed hard (the standard kilogram and standard meter in Paris are made of this alloy because of stability and wear resistance). In pure form, and 0.9995 fine is pretty pure, platinum is easy to bend and scratch. You chemistry laboratory types can back me up on that.

This series comes in the following denominations:

$10 nominal, 16.5 mm diameter, 0.10005 ounce Troy, giving 0.1000 ounce Troy fine platinum. Today’s value is $84.35.

$25 nominal, 22 mm diameter, 0.2501 ounce Troy, giving 0.250 ounce Troy fine platinum. Today’s value is $210.88.

$50 nominal, 27 mm diameter, 0.5003 ounce Troy, giving 0.500 ounce Troy fine platinum. Today’s value is $421.75.

$100 nominal, 32.7 mm diameter, 1.0005 ounce Troy, giving 1.000 ounce Troy fine platinum. Today’s value is $843.50.

All four sizes share a common design for the year and type, just like the gold eagles. The reverse differs within a type only by the lettering for weight and denomination. Here is a picture of the most common one:

$100 Platinum Eagle
Obverse designed by John M. Mercanti
Reverse designed by Thomas D. Rogers, Sr.
1997 – Present (with reverse design variations)

That is pretty much the story on US bullion coins. Next time I will talk about the properties that make a “good” coin, and whilst there are some in common between circulating and bullion coins, there are also some significant differences. In the installment after that, I will discuss the coin manufacturing process. Other ideas for topics are always welcome.

As always, comments and questions are welcome.

Warmest regards,

Doc

I swear, is there a single leader in the Republican Party that is not just nuts? The Republicans in Wisconsin have their panties in a wad over a literature textbook used in the eighth grade in some schools. It turns out that the text has an essay by (at the time of writing) a member of the US Senate, Barack Obama. The outrage! The book publisher should have known that Obama was running for President, some day.

Ole Reince was on Fox this morning with the pretentious and hateful Megyn (interesting spelling) Kelly. The text in question is the McDoougal Littel Literature book, apparently the 2008 edition. Now, as I remember it takes around two years or more to get a textbook published, but that is not the point.

Here is a short video featuring him from the Wisconsin Republican Party. I could not find the video of him from Fox news this morning anywhere.

[Admin note: The embed isn't working, so I changed it to a link. Kate]

Link to YouTube video

UPDATE: I finally found the video, but only on the Fox site. As much as I hate to have anything to do with Fox, here is the embed. It is pretty short clip, but is telling. I left the first one in just so you can see the belief system of the Wisconsin Republican Party.

Fox video

There is a 15 page essay by Obama in the book (counting the pictures), obviously, according to Preibus, intended to indoctrinate students. This guy joins the rest of the book banners by suggesting on the Fox segment that the school districts literally cut those pages out of every copy of the text. That got me to wanting to do a little checking on Priebus.

It turns out that he became the chair of the state Republican Party this year, and has the day job as an attorney who defends companies when they get their tales in a crack with OSHA. Yes, folks, he is (gasp!) one of those awful trial lawyers!

His education credentials seem OK, with a JD from University of Miami School of Law and a BS (political science and English) from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He had done quite a bit of law clerking, the most interesting one being for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Los Angeles, California. That one sort of gave me pause. I do not know if he could not find a different job, or if he wanted to do some infiltration.

His choices of organizations is sort of interesting, too. The one that I found to be most interesting is that he is an Advisory Board Member, CareNet Crisis Pregnancy Center of Kenosha. Crises pregnancy centers are the wingnuts’ answer to Planned Parenthood, and attempt to coerce, in many cases, unwed mothers to be to carry the pregnancy to term. So book cutting and extreme anti-abortion, too is he.

Other interesting connections are his association with the Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. Van Hollen has his own problems right now, as there are serious accusations of attempts on his part to suppress the vote by scary brown and black people. Interestingly, the NAACP was one of the parties involved in bringing a suit against Van Hollen. Priebus says that the multiple contacts that he has had recently with Van Hollen were not related. It gets sort of complicated. Perhaps a reader in Wisconsin can add some detail. There is some information <a href=”www.uppitywis.org/tags/reince-priebus”>here</a>.

Other than that, details on him are pretty sketchy, at least on the Tubes. The only personal information that I can find is that he married his high school girlfriend in 1999. I was able to find out that he ran for and lost a state senate seat in 2004, but that is about it. However, I will keep looking and if a Wisconsin reader can add more detail, I would appreciate it.

One of the reasons that I posted about him, other than his outrageous display this morning is that there is so little about him available on the Tubes.

Warmest regards,

Doc

By now we have all heard of, if not seen clips, of the really pathetic person of the hour, Michele Bachmann. Her words reached the heigths of idiocy last Friday on the Tweety show, and Tweety played her like a Stradivarius.

I have to give Tweety some credit, he seems to be doing better. Not KO or RM material yet, but I can watch his show now without getting puked off at him. But that is beside the point.

For those of you having trouble putting a face to the name, here is a picture of her and family from here official campaign site (sorry, I choose not to link to it):

First, she is not from Minnesota, but rather is from Iowa, even she grew up, for the most part, in Minnesota. Interestingly, her parents divorced when she was rather small, and she lived with her dad with her brothers. Now, if you go to the Wikipedia entry for her, something contradictory appears. In one sentence it indicates that she “became financially independent” at age 13, then just after that it says that she worked her way through college in part by “…cleaning fish at her uncle’s resort in Alaska”. Hmmmmmmm, ultra conservative woman with five children with an Alaska connection. And it gets better. What I have not been able to find is what “financially independent at age 13″ means. Did she run away from or get thrown out of home? Did she get an inheritance? (If so, did she pay the “death tax”)? Obviously she was not loaded or she would not have been cleaning fish to pay her way through college. If anyone out there knows, please respond with a comment.

Not being one to depend on Wikipedia as a sole source, I rooted around a bit. By the way, the Wikipedia entry on her seems to be very carefully crafted to put her in the best light. I strongly suspect that her operatives have scrubbed it, but that is just my opinion.

According to her campaign website, she was graduated from Winona State University in Minnesota, and obtained a law degree from the Coburn School of Law. Now, the Coburn School of law is (well, actually was) the legal school for Oral Roberts University. It no longer exists. I guess the house remodelings cost too much to support a law school, too. Her site goes on to say that she received “…a degree in tax law from the College of William and Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law”. That is not shabby.

Still using her official “reelect me” site, she has the usual views expected for a wingnut, so there is nothing really to report that catches the eye. Taxes, drill-drill-drill everywhere, fight-them-over-there-so-we-do-not-have-to-here, and protect our borders from the menace of brown people.

Far more disturbing are her really wingnut views. Minimum wage increase? Pffff! Intelligent design! Sure! Right to choose? Of course, you can choose whatever hospital you want to deliver your unwanted, horribly afflicted, result of rape and incest child, as long as your private insurance can pay for it. Same sex marriage? Sure, as long as it is one man and one woman.

I like to keep these posts rather short, just give enough information to allow the reader some background next time he or she sees the pathetic person on the TeeVee or reads about them here or elsewhere. There are lots of diaries about her recent escapades, so I will not go into those.

I will add that she and her husband “fasted and prayed” for three days before she decided to run for the US House. Nothing makes for better important decisions that a big case of hypoglycemia. This woman is unhinged, and with some luck will also be unseated.

Oh, by the way, she left her job as an IRS prosecutor for a while to raise the five natural and 23 foster children that she and spousy had. Spousy, by the way, has a counseling degree from Pat Robertson’s Regent University and runs a Christian counseling center. It must do pretty well to support 28 children.

Any comments and additional information are welcome. With the political season winding down in a couple of weeks, I suspect that there will be fewer pathetic people, but when I see one that I believe to be noteworthy, I will post about her or him. Any suggestion for additional pathetic people is welcome.

Warmest regards,

Doc

Chirality comes from the Greek root ?????, meaning “hand”. Most people outside of us chemistry wanks do not know that many organic molecules have the property of “handedness”, meaning that they come in two varieties, a “right-handed” and a “left-handed” one. Actually, it is bit more complex, and this will become clear in a few paragraphs.

First, let us define what chirality is. Take a look at your hands. They are pretty much the same, both with backs and palms and, for most of us, five fingers each. Now, at first blush one would think that they are essentially identical to each other, except for any accidental scar or the dominant one being just a little larger than the other.

Not so. If they were identical, you could twist your wrists and rotate your arms such that they appeared the same. But you can not, even if you are a contortionist. Hands are mirror images of each other, but because of their spatial arrangement, they are non-superimposible mirror images of each other.

Breaking: This diary is being hijacked by, well Translator.

I just got my absentee ballot today (Saturday) and filled it out this evening after my stint on What’s for Dinner. Here it is in its entirety. If illegible, please let me know.

Because of the geometry of the document, I had to break it down into four pictures. Here is the top one:

It is the instructions and the fill in for voting for President and Vice-President. You will note that on the right, I just left the unopposed candidates one blank. The important one in this picture is that I filled in Obama and Biden. But look at the choices we have in Arkansas.

Here is the picture.

Here is the second half of the front page. Note that I voted against the Blue Dogs, Pryor and Ross, without endangering our caucus. Even if the Greens win, they will caucus with the Democrats. I wrote both Pryor and Ross after the FISA debacle that I would never vote for either of them again. Nice to be able to do so without supporting Republicans. Here is the image:

Those votes, whilst important, are not the only things of the ballot. The Gov race is two years from now, but some other things are more important. Please look at the reverse side of the ballot and how I voted.

The first one has to do with allowing the State legislature more freedom, and the way I look at it, the less the better, so I voted “NO”.

The one just below has to do with allowing the State legislature to meet more often, and, for the reasons above, again I voted “NO”. The less time to make laws, the better, I think.

The middle one is an amendment to authorize a lottery, run by either the state or by an independent, not for profit, entity, and to use all of the proceeds after administrative payouts and prizes for scholorships. One of the phrases indicates that those monies have nothing to do with apprpriated funds and can not affect them. I voted “YES”, because there have been, and will be, many other much more onerous ones, like the one a couple a years ago that would have privatized it to only one set of corporatists.

The first one on the right side would make illegal for a couple who are not married either to adopt or to foster children. This is the next swipe against gay marriage in my state, since the anti-gay marriage one passed a couple of years ago. Of course I voted “NO”.

The one under it has to do with the State getting more control on the waters of Arkansas, and I do not reject that out of hand, but the authority to expend $60,000,000 sort of puked me off of it. There are more important things, so I voted “NO”.

Now to the real diary. I hope that no one was offended by this little tirade. My voting record is not a secret.

A body is chiral if it is not superimposible with its mirror image. Take a sphere, for example. The mirror image of a sphere is superimposible with the original, so it is not chiral. (The rules say that you can manipulate the images in any way by rotation in any plane, but you can not change the image itself). A square is also achiral. But hands are different. They are constructed such that it is impossible to superimpose one and its mirror image. Such mirror images are termed enantiomers when molecules are involved.

Molecules are like that, too. The most important class are organic compounds with a carbon singly bonded to four different atoms or groups, but many other examples exist. Here is a picture of a simple chiral molecule:

For the three dimensionally challenged, get two packing peanuts or other small pieces of plastic foam and eight toothpicks. Take markers and color pairs of toothpicks so that you have four colors of toothpicks, then push them into the foam so that the arrangement looks sort of like an old fashioned jack with which kids used to play. Then do the same for the second piece of foam to make a mirror image of the first one. Try as you may, it is not possible to twist or turn the second one to superimpose it with the first one.

Here is a picture of a pair that I made with scraps of packing material and four toothpicks (I cut mine in half) They do not look very good, but in person are better:

Here is a picture of pretty much the same thing using my fancy molecular model set that Mrs. Translator bought for me many years ago when I started graduate school. You would not believe how many times this set helped me understand things, like the unique properties of DABCO. (Tips to anyone who knows what this is).

OK, please do not go to sleep yet, because you should be proud that you just created molecular models. A lot of this is done by computer graphics these days, but even we chemists like to have something that we can hold and rotate to get a better feel for things.

So, why is this important? The answer is, because of life itself.

The proteins and sugars in our bodies are chiral. There was an episode of Star Trek where Spock was thrown into a mirror image universe and the proteins in food were unusable, so he had to convert them to the correct configuration to survive. Chiral molecules react with achiral ones identically for the most part, but very differently with other chiral molecules.

Here is an example that everyone just about knows. Do you ever use caraway seeds for flavoring? They smell the way they do because the “smelly” molecule is carvone. Do you like spearmint? Carvone is the “smelly” compound it it, too. What gives?

It turns out that the proteins that form the scent receptors in our nose are chiral, too. The carvone from caraway is “S” carvone, and the one from spearmint is “L” carvone, and the two interact with the receptors differently, giving rise to different perceptions. Here is a picture of the two different carvones:

The dashed lines mean, from thick to thin, that the group pointed towards the back of the plane of the computer screen, and the wedges mean that the group is coming out of the plane of the screen, towards you.

The “S” designation is from the Latin sinister, meaning “left” and the “D” is from the Latin dexter, meaning “right”. No wonder why the wingnuts think of the political left as evil, the Latin word says so. This is the convention that we chemists use to define which configuration is present. Interesting, in some severe Muslim traditions, the left hand is considered to be unclean. I do not know how much that has to do with Arabic tradition as opposed to Roman influence, and any historian reading this is encouraged to clear up the area.

It is possible for a molecule to contain more than one carbon bonded to four different things (an asymmetric carbon), and indeed that happens often. The acid from grapes, tartaric acid, is a good example. It was actually Louis Pasteur who figured this out, sorting mirror image crystals of cream of tarter by hand with only a magnifier and forceps.

Compounds with two different chiral centers are called diastereomers. I mention this only because one my students, who was struggling with the concept of chirality, answered a quiz question by saying disastromers. I suppose for many this topic does seem to be disastrous. I gave her full credit, by the way.

Complex molecules can have many chiral centers, and proteins and polysaccharides (see a previous post for them) can have millions. All proteins are composed of amino acids, and on our planet almost all of them are of only one chirality. The others just do not fit together with them, so the cause of Mr. Spock’s near starvation.

I am not going to beat this to death tonight, but there are two other concepts that bear mentioning. Chiral compounds interact with light differently. The implication is that light itself is chiral, otherwise it would not interact at all or interact the same with either enantiomer. At the risk of being wankish, you can tell the difference between caraway and spearmint oil just by passing light that is polarized through it. Polarized light has been filtered through the same material that Polaroid sunglasses are made, and it filters out light except for only one small set of vibrations.

When you shine that light through caraway, you will find that it has been rotated by 61 degrees with respect to the vertical. That is like taking two pairs of Polaroid sunglasses and rotating them that amount and trying to read through them. But is you pass it through spearmint, it is -61 degrees. So light is chiral.

I could go on, but would rather respond to comments and questions. Remember, this is an open science thread, so please do not limit your thoughts to this subject only.

Warmest regards,

Doc

This diary is the result of a comment thread from this diary by plf515 Thursday. We got to kicking around the thought of whether Kipling was actually an imperialist. I maintain that he was not in the sense that he approved of armed takeover of foreign countries, and some historians agree with me, but not all do.

The poem in particularly was in question was White Man’s Burden. Some interesting notes about that particular work include the fact that it is about American imperialism, not British, and that Kipling had resided in the United States from 1892 to 1896. This poem was written in 1899, and is related to the American occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.

I indicated to the readers of the comment thread that I would explicate this work paragraph by paragraph, which will be done forthwith. I would like to correct a technical misstatement that I made in the comment thread. Kipling was never the British Poet Laureate. He did win the Nobel Prize in Literature, the youngest author at the time (but the Nobels were only six years old at the time of his award in 1907).

In this treatment, the original words will be bold, and my explication of them in normal type.

The White Man’s Burden

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

OK, now you have occupied this territory about which you know little of nothing. Send your youngest and strongest to occupy this place, thousands of miles from home, go ahead. You have to take care of these people and maintain order, now that you own them, and they do not like it very much. You understand so little about their culture that you consider them inferior, evil, and unable to govern themselves.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.

OK, send the soldiers there. You broke it, so you bought it. Now you have to put down insurrection, and combat terrorism at the same time, and not let the people there get too cocky. Those folks work for America now, and the solders will see to it. The profits of their resources will go to people other than them.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Ok, send the solders there. They have to keep the peach with violence. Now you have to do something about rebuilding infrastructure, like farms, hospitals, and the like. Just about when you think you have succeeded, the one that the corporatists want, watch the Chinese get the oil contracts.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Go ahead, sent the solders there. Take out the guys who were in charge. Now YOU have to make it work, from the simplest to the most complex parts of society. But it will not be easy, because the people will resist. Only by an overwhelming force can this be done, and many of your own will die over it.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”

Go ahead, occupy it. The People of the United States will blame you for it when it goes badly, and the People of this territory will resent your presence. Keep telling them that things are better, even though the standard of living will be much worse and they will long for the days before the invasion.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Ye dare not stoop to less–
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Go ahead, go and try to keep it. It is your DUTY. But you will get tired of it before long, but not admit it. And whey you fail, the people whom you mistreated will remember with malice.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Have done with childish days–
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Go ahead, try it, but I know what will happen. Things will be great, on paper, you will be treated as liberators. The people will throw flowers at you. So you think, with a childish, limited mind. Finally, reality will set in: you are wrong to do this, and after years of dissatisfaction, the American people will remember you, and judge you as the worst leader in history.

Wow. The more I looked at this poem, the more I thought of Iraq. Kipling was prescient. Written 104 years before the Iraqi invasion, it is almost a template of what was to come, even though it was about the Philippine occupation. What I take from this is that Kipling understood very well what occupation was all about, and the White Man, believing superiority, is actually the fool. I do not see a shred of racism in this work, but am certainly willing to listen to other opinions.

Warmest regards,

Doc

I will admit that I have a love/hate relationship with MSNBC. Olbermann and Maddow are wonderful, Shuster is OK, and even Tweetie has his moments. On the other hand, the vile Scarborough and Buchanan are regulars. But one of the most pathetic and disgusting guests that appears regularly is Brad Blakeman.

He is usually called a “Republican strategist”, but that is sort of short shrift in describing him. Please allow me to take a few minutes to give some detail about this pitiful excuse for a human being.

Blakeman, for those of you who do not place a face with the name, is this guy:

Blakeman was born on 01 September 1958 and has a BA in Political Science and a JD in Law. He is a member of Americans for a Republican Majority, a shrill pressure group that has of had some interesting members, including, just name a few, Jack Abramoff, Hayley Barbour, Pat Boone (wtf?!), Dominionist Richard DeVoss of Amway, Hugh Hewitt (as Olbermann says, the man with a name and a half), Ken Lay (dead now, so I guess he does not count), Jeff Skilling (another Enron guy, in the jailhouse now), Ben Stein (who, interestingly, had a very long running column in Penthouse magazine, the bastion of family values), and many others.

He has a long history supporting the Republicans, and not just the current crop. In 2000 he was “lead advance representative” for the Bush-Cheney campaign, whatever that entails. He was a “consultant” to the President and Vice-President from 1980 to 1993 (anyone remember damned old Reagan?).

From 2001 to 2003 he was Deputy Assistant to the President for Appointments and Scheduling (I wonder if he scheduled the visits by Abramoff?), and then palled around with other big ticket Republicans. One of his notable associates is the dreadful Ari Fleischer, the former White House professional liar spokesperson.

His association with Fleischer led to the formation of the nauseating Freedom’s Watch, and Blakeman was president of that group until they had some sort of a falling out, forcing his resignation. I would loved to had been a fly on the wall during this episode.

This guy is a poster child for the despicable! Here is a short list of some of his other affiliations:

Friends of George Allen, Mr. Macaca himself

Friends of Giuliani Exploratory Committee (they did not explore very well)

Friends of Senator D’Amato 1998 Committee (yeah, old Al “Bugsy” D’Amato)

Santorum 2006

And finally, John McCain 2008

So there you have him in nutshell, a supporter of vile (and mostly losing) people. Next time you see Blakeman on MSNBC, you have some biographical information to reinforce your contempt for the Republican talking points that spew from his lips like the bile that it is.

Warmest regards,

Doc

I hardly ever watch Fox the so called news network, but did because the old man and the tart were in an interview with the despicable Sean Hannity.

Since the show is purportedly called Hannity and Colmes, I wondered about Colmes.

He is a shill, and even more despicable than Hannity.

First of all, his “liberal” credentials are extremely suspect, since he is married to the sister of the venomous Monica Crowley, another Fox pretend expert. Adding to that, he started out at a stand up comic years ago, and is pretty much the same, but sits down most of the time now.

Roger Ailes hired him in 1996, so Colmes has been a Fox shill for 12 years now. From stand up comic to sit down lap dog, Colmes typifies just about the worst of the worst. I shudder to imagine what goes on before and after the Hannity and Colmes show is on, with beta male Colmes being subservient to the just awful Sean Hannity.

He has a website, but I will not even show it any respect with a link. Tonight’s additions include things already covered by members here at Kos, an AP repost about Petraeus, a recap of his radio show. I do not think that it gets much air, since only five stations carry it in California, two of them in Los Angeles, according to his own website. Running from 10 PM to 1 AM is hardly prime time, either, but I guess that is best that Ailes can get for such a loser.

Since I never disparage anyone because I realize that they can not help the way that their physical appearance is, I will not mention that he resembles a space alien more than a human being. Well, I thought about it, but struck it out of this post.

Interestingly, the first advert on his site is for the Newt Gringich Newsletter. I know that most good progressives look that up first thing every day. I could not find the market saturation of his show, but do know that I have never heard it nor spoken to anyone who has.

Could it be that he is a computer generated graphic on Hannity’s show? Perhaps so, since he rarely speaks and his movements are sort of programmed. Perhaps he is one of those new androids that resemble humans, but are really creepy, like this one.

http://www.youtube.com/…

Well, not much more can be said about that pathetic person. Please comment for your idea of the next one in this series.

Warmest regards,