What else did I learn about chemistry?

Yesterday, I talked about all the various ways in which baking soda has endeared itself to me.

Today, I'd like to ramble on a little more about a related topic, the things I've learned in chemistry class, which are not entirely the same thing. I didn't take any chemistry courses in college; I did, however, two years of chemistry in high school, and got a 5 on my AP Chem test, so perhaps I learned about basic chemistry in class.

The AP chem test turned out to be the most valuable AP test I took (out of four), since it gave me a whole eight credit hours, a sequence that was actually on the checksheet for my physics major at some point. AP Physics wouldn't have done as much for me, ironically.

The man who taught both of my high school chem classes, was just an incredible teacher - maybe not the most organized-seeming person, and he would ramble and get side-tracked once in a while, but his stories would drive home valuable lessons. Not only did his lessons send me through the AP test, but years later, I took the physics GRE and knocked out a 770.

I hadn't taken any formal coursework in thermodynamics when I took the test, which made it tricky, as that was one of the topics it covered; however, I was surprised at how many thermodynamics questions I could answer based on things my chemistry teacher had taught me back in high school. I still remember many of the lessons I learned in class; one of the odder ones is to always taste test, and that a little bit of lime flavor goes a long way. He had us making ice cream for a lab once.

Another lesson that was reinforced in my first chemistry class - perhaps not the best lesson to take to heart in high school - was that the less work you seem to do to get a given test grade, the more it impresses people with your intelligence when it's a high grade. I shared my 10th grade chemistry class with a much more studious girl named Jennie, and she expressed amazement that I kept acing quiz after quiz in that class. I sat in the back corner, where the distracted talkative kids were.

The guy in front of me was facing a failing grade long before he got the crap kicked out of him by some rough characters in the parking lot across from the school one lunchtime and wound up in the hospital; I probably had three of the four lowest grades in that class sitting nearest to me. But even if I seemed terribly distracted, had a habit of not doing homework and turning lab reports in late if ever - things that Jennie had apparently noticed - I tended to pay attention to what my teacher was actually saying, because it was so interesting.

Later, I looked back on Jennie telling me that she was amazed that I could keep doing so well in the class without doing work, and I see one of the moments where I was closest to consciously realizing that more than anything else, I was making a conspicuous display out of laziness throughout high school in order to score some kind of points with my peers. Now that I've seen that sort of attitude from the other side of the classroom, I strongly suspect some of my teachers in high school felt frustrated with me.

Baking soda: The duct tape of household chemicals

I've been using that description for baking soda for longer than I should admit. Perhaps I'm being irrationally biased; clearly, I can live without baking soda, and often do. Gone at the days when I have a roll of duct tape always on hand, and equally gone are the days that I always had a box of baking soda on hand.

But it is useful stuff. In chemistry class, my chemistry teacher taught us that if there was a spill of something, it probably wouldn't hurt to throw baking soda on it. Water to dilute, baking soda to neutralize - because baking soda is a natural buffer. Mix with an acid, and the bicarbonate ion fizzes, neutralizing mole for mole; mix with a base, and the bicarbonate will react to produce carbonate, which will tend to bind to positive ions and precipitate out of solution.

So it's a nice "safe" chemical. Nontoxic and neutralizes a wide range of acids and bases. Its pH buffering effect is appreciated by pool operators the world over - and it also helps keep swimming pools crystal clear. See a container of "pool clarifier" on the shelf? Check the label. Odds are it's sodium bicarbonate - baking soda - even if it's priced much higher.

But there's more! What with reacting to lots of things and dissolving well, it's actually the sort of chemical that you can use to scrub things clean, from bathroom floors to your teeth. Of course, there are better things to use for each of those, more specialized chemicals; when we're talking about keeping everything neat and clean, baking soda's deoderizing effect is where it really shines. Trash cans, refrigerators, teenagers - everything smells less when you apply baking soda to it.

Speaking of applying baking soda to people, you can use it topically in a paste to alleviate itchy irritated spots. This is one use you may actually see on the side of a box sometime; working at camp, I would use it to help sooth away mosquito bites. And since I've gotten to the topic of biting and eating, there's something more pleasant than mosquitos eating people: People eating baked goods. Let us not forget why it's called baking soda; it's useful for that, too, making things that much more edible.

Such a useful chemical; such a simple chemical, too, and like duct tape, you can just keep going on about all the uses.

I like long games

I'm a bit of a gamer. There are a few computer games I play a great deal of, and I enjoy board games and tabletop roleplaying. There are two common features in most of the games I play: Long and complex.

I like Battletech. It's a tactical game you play on maps or terrain and either one of hundreds of "official" units, or, just as often, ones that you''ve designed yourself. Simulating five minutes of combat with twelve-meter tall futuristic war machines can take five hours - and I've very cheerfully enjoyed playing Battletech for five hours.

Lately, Twilight Imperium has become one of my favorite games. It's like a more complex and less violent version of Risk, and similar to a nice long Battletech game, it lasts long enough that you can schedule a pizza break in the middle.

I've run and played tabletop RPGs - roleplaying games, mostly different kinds of Dungeons and Dragons - and a good session length is about four hours. The "whole" game ideally lasts for semesters, possibly years, of sessions every week or two, and the fellow running the game gets to decide which optional rulebooks to use. Talk about complexity - there's literally over a thousand pages of "core" material for many RPGs, and the optional rules can fill bookshelves.

Defense of the Ancients is probably my favorite computer game. It's a particular custom map on Warcraft III - and where a normal WCIII game involves several types of units and a choice between a dozen or so heroes with a few items, DotA is a ten-player romp with somewhere around a hundred different heroes with similar numbers of items. Some of which work together, some of which don't, and others of which transform into new items when combined with others. A full game will usually last an hour.

The drawback is that when you play long games, you pretty much have to schedule them, and you don't always have the time to get in a game. The drawback of complex games is that it can get difficult to find people to play them with.

219 hours: How long was this supposed to take?

A reflection: How quickly could I have done this? My bachelor's degrees came out with a total of 174 credit hours listed on them; my master's degree involved 45 credit hours of graduate study. I spent five years on my undergraduate work, and two on my master's degree; fourteen semesters, with the summers off. I did earn some money over my summers for my troubles, though not all that much.

On paper, the maximum credit hour enrollment at my undergraduate institution is 18 credit hours. So, beginning with no credit, it would take ten semesters of sequential full-time work at a full load, with six hours of slack - which would be needed, since a few classes were 2, 4, or 5 credit hours instead of the usual 3. The maximum credit hour enrollment for graduate students is lower - 12 - and so I would need to take the full four semesters.

So fourteen semesters is quite reasonable. But it's not the theoretical top speed. I started with 24 hours of AP and placement credit, and it's possible to exceed 18 credit hours with special permission - easily given to a student in the honors program, as I was. So my undergraduate work could have been crammed into 8 semesters (by averaging a little over 18 hours per semester); perhaps I would not have had the time to sing in Higher Ground, or fence, but possible.

Had I been more proactive in high school, and better at convincing administrative types, I would have covered more math and science credit in high school. Spending a single year on geometry, going Calc BC instead of AB, and taking a math class each semester at UNC as an independent study would have meant covering 14 additional credit hours of mathematics early - and had I been particularly convincing, I might have been able to finagle my way out of introductory physics, which was only interesting during the honors lab section, another 10 hours.

So now, I'm down to 126 hours that I "had" to take at college - which could be done in seven semesters. But I'm not done. If you were in my shoes, and were trying to accelerate as quickly as possible, you'd take summer courses. By taking two summers of core courses in each of the two summer sessions, the undergraduate study could be cut to three years for the triple major course of study. Assuming scheduling worked out perfectly, of course; and then, by overloading four extra graduate level math courses into 20-21 credit hour semesters, I could have theoretically completed my master's program in a year and a half with all the same coursework.

So yes. I'm a very lazy fellow, since if I were as diligent and directed as possible, I could have completed the same coursework before I turned 23 instead of after turning 25. But I don't think I would have quite the same education, as I have had so many other learning experiences outside my coursework that would not have fit in such a schedule. Some wasted time as well, yes, but I will not greatly regret taking the same length of time we would normally expect such a course of study to take.

Indeed, by taking minimal full-time loads, another person, perhaps one more like Van Wilder and less like myself, could have easily spent nine years as a full time student on the same course of study without failing or repeating a single class. Throw in failed and repeated courses, and we might be able to stretch that another year to a full decade. And I am at least not that lazy.

Dancing and the martial arts

It may come as a surprise to those of you who know me for more cerebral reasons, but I am actually a very physical person.

And one of the things I've had cause to reflect on is the curious relationship between martial arts and dancing. It's a connection with history; classical dance and fencing, for example, have stolen footwork from each other for a long time. You've probably heard of football players taking ballet to improve their performance in that violent sport; you may even have heard of capoeira, which blurs the line between dance and martial arts.

I've taken modern dance classes and danced recreationally - international folk, contra, and swing at one time or another, and it seemed I was always following choreography in high school chorus. Being a male who could carry on loudly and on pitch while moving around meant I was indispensable in many numbers. I took tae kwon do into my teenage years, and then fenced in college.

Dancers and martial artists share many of the same warmups and stretches, more than typical for two different kinds of athletes; flexibility, balance, and coordination are are crucial in both pursuits. The key difference is not in the types of movement used; every basic building block that is used in one can be used in the other. (Well, almost. En pointe in ballet is, I suspect, an exception, but I can think of few others.)

The most basic difference lies in the treatment of rhythm. When you dance, you dance with the rhythm. When you spar, you fight against the rhythm. The skilled martial artist constructs rhythms in order to break them; the point is to become the unexpected, to surprise your opponent with carefully controlled timing. When you dance with a partner, the point is to communicate and telegraph your timing as much as possible; in dance, you must master gluing yourself to a rhythm so intimately that even should you slip, you will move with the rhythm.

To be masterful in either, one must master rhythm - but in two completely different opposed ways.

Herbal remedies

I recently read a piece in the newspaper - a little AP notice saying that a decade after the government embarked on a massive effort to study herbal remedies, there has been little positive news. The "lone exception" cited in the article is the suggestion that ginger may alleviate nausea caused by chemotherapy.

But that doesn't really tell the whole scientific story of herbal remedies. Sure, the popular (and lucrative) herbal remedies have generally not lived up to their reputation in clinical studies. The placebo effect is strong with us, but seems to be the main benefit of such.

However, the herbal remedies the AP article is referring to are hardly the whole story of herbal medicine. Many herbs have potent medicinal effects affirmed by studies. Cilantro does interesting things with heavy metals; cinnamon affects blood's cholesterol and glucose balances; turmeric (the orange spice that gives curry powder and many curries their distinctive yellowness) plays a role in suppressing histamines. Garlic really does have an impact on the immune system's behavior.

Willow bark does indeed alleviate pain, and also has potentially beneficial cardiac effects - you've probably taken a concentrated form of the same chemical, marketed under the name of aspirin. Camellia sinensis and coffea arabica share a remarkable effective stimulant chemical released when parts of the plants are steeped in hot water - caffeine.

So when I read that article, I thought to myself that it overstated the case. There certainly are herbal remedies that work. There may be many, such as echinacea, which fail to live up to the hype of their fans under scientific scrutiny, but even if the government-funded studies in question picked out only one significant effect, the things you put in your food will affect the systems of your body.

What working at a weight loss camp did to me

Yesterday, I noted that I once (twice, actually) worked at a weight loss camp. It amazes me how often that experience turns out to be relevant to the topic and hand; it also had a truly remarkable impact on my life.

Before I worked at camp, I was absolutely terrified of the idea of working with children. It wasn't going to be pleasant, or something I would be too competent with. Children were something you tried to avoid getting stuck with. My surprise was that I actually had fun, and my second summer there, Ira told all the other counselors that I was a fantastic counselor. Before working at camp, I was ambivalent about the idea of having children in the future; after working at camp, I decided it would be nice to have kids of my own at some point.

Before I worked at camp, I didn't think about my weight. Nothing like working at a weight loss camp to suddenly make you conscious of your weight and give you a touch of paranoia about weight management. Most of us counselors also picked up very funny food issues during the summer, since we could eat freely so long as the campers surrounding us for most of the day didn't see it. I ate about three times what the campers did.

Before I worked at camp, I had no idea how sleazy people could be. Ira himself meant well, but had some old bad habits and a couple of associates widely criticized by the counseling staff; the people running the Patterson school, however, were the real eye-openers. Ira's buddy (partner, the first year, I think; later, Tommy became his business partner, and Tommy was a much more upright guy) may have been an eBay-flipping online poker addict with an eye for quick-get-rich schemes, but the people running the Patterson school? Complete sleazeballs, made every one of us involved look like saints even on our worst days.

And the school was just falling apart around us. Talk about a badly managed property. I learned a lot of practical lessons in maintenance and repair. Not to mention the second year, I had some nice hands-on experience in pool chemistry and how to operate a pool.

I think one of the more subtle things I got from working at camp was a self-image boost. Even the most athletic of the other counselors wouldn't be able to jump as high or run as quick a mile; it's hard to get too down on yourself when the kids look up to you, your boss thinks you can do anything, and you're rapidly finding out that you can teach things you've never taught before.

The key of falsifiability

When I hear people talking about teaching intelligent design, "proofs" of economics, and touting home remedies, I think about what makes something a scientific theory.

It needs to make some kind of predictions that can be tested. A scientific theory has to be falsifiable; it simply has to be the case that measurements could be made that would make it false. When they fail to do so, we proclaim the theory good.

An object falling does not prove gravity. I could just as easily say that things want to be close together, that celestial bodies naturally move in circles while terrestrial bodies want to be stationary on a low-lying surface, and explain everything that way. Data always underdetermines theory, points underdetermine functions, facts never tell the whole story of a case.

So why? The best theory is the one that walks the knife-edge between falsifiable and false. The slightest changes in the data could invalidate it - but somehow, they haven't. Arguments about government policy illustrate the point perfectly; is the problem too much protectionism, or too much free trade? Too much subsidy, or not enough? We can stretch and contrive a complex explanation justifying ourselves, and in fact, pundits seem to do so all the time.

What would it take for you to disbelieve this idea? If you can answer that question, you know whether you're relying on science or faith to justify your belief.

Beauty tips from the furball

Many of you may not have realized I have any interest in cosmetology. Truth of the matter is, I'm interested in everything, and so, here it is - what I know about cosmetic care.

Keep those pores clean and that body free of toxins!

For flushing out the skin regularly, and purging your body of toxins, what works better than a nice long workout followed by thorough rehydration? Sweat pores are tiny and everywhere, and when you're adding and removing a few liters of water, anything water-soluble is likely to go with it - along with some dead skin, dirt, and body oils.

In fact, I now believe that particularly harsh and sour body odor is the result of not having sweated enough recently. I've noticed it with myself - if I haven't done a solid workout lately, I'm going to smell pretty sour the first time I break a sweat. Go on, prove me wrong - take up a regular exercise regimen and tell me you don't feel better about yourself. Or stop, and tell me you think you smell nicer.

What, me smell?

Personally, I'm not fond of scents. Unscented deoderant for me, please - and if I can't find that, a palmful of baking soda works quite well to mute the natural smell. If you must, please be subtle... some of us have sensitive noses, others are allergic, and I, at least, remember some terribly irritating people in high school who wore much too much scent, so I have poor associations with that.

The idea is to smell nice - something that will blend into your deoderant, your surviving natural scent (yes, you still have one), and in all probability your shampoo, conditioner, body wash, soap, lotion, and any other products you use, rather than overwhelm everything. In my humble opinion, one should not to smell like perfume. Your scent will tend to improve with exercise and regular showers, of course.

Yes, showers!

Nothing beats regular doses of epidermal water. Nothing! I go in for at least one shower a day. I recommend it - it's nice, pleasant, helps wash gunk and dirt off your skin, and usually makes you smell better, even if you don't use anything scented. I also have the vague feeling that making your skin soaking wet might moisturize it, too.

Myself, I have very curly hair. I've found it actually looks best with a combination of chlorine and sun bleaching plus regular combing in the shower using copious amounts of conditioner. Following the advice posted in this livejournal group, I've found that using large amounts of cheap conditioner with no sodium laurel sulfate really works. For me, anyway; for those of you with other hair types, I recommend reading around in there. Amazing stuff.

And then... fashion?

No, let's not go there. There are many things I detest about men's fashion, and this entry is positive! If, perhaps, a little sarcastic here and there.

Legal, regulated, taxed?

Today, for a change of pace, I've decided I'm going to try to think of a list of things that I think can be questioned on moral grounds, or on the grounds of their social cost, but should be legal - since making them illegal causes more problems - but carefully regulated, and that are worth taxing to recover the full social cost of the enterprise.

• Tobacco
• Meat
  
• Alcohol
• Driving
  
• Firearms
• Cosmetic surgery
  
• Hunting
• Sharp pointy things
• Marijuana
  
• Prostitution

This list is sorted by approximate increase in mortality caused by allowing them in the US, so far as I could tell. Prostitution is at the bottom, because as best as I could tell from the comparative statistics and studies, legalizing prostitution seems to actually reduce prostitution-related mortality. Curiously, it's the least lethal two at the bottom that are most often illegal in this country.

The Ecolitan Lesson

Some books teach you things. At times, I wonder if I am drawing the right lessons from the novels I peruse; in L.E. Modesitt's Ecolitan books, the lesson seems a fairly pointed one, so I feel nearly sure that the point is what I think it is:

Know what your priorities are. In the Ecolitan books, the protagonist always has some goal in mind - preserving a way of life, breaking an Empire, something monumental. The protagonist stops at nearly nothing to achieve this - and because they know exactly what their priorities are, it is the thought of a single moment to determine which priorities an action works for or against.

Most of the protagonists are highly pragmatic, and the results are bloody - but in the end, the trade-offs they have made, they are satisfied with. I think there's at least a grain of truth to that, and a grain of danger. People who put a single goal above all else risk becoming monsters in pursuit of that goal - whether the goal is destroying a nation, overturning a law, or accumulating wealth. The truth, though, is that most of the regrets I've had, and the mistakes I've made - or watched others make - are related to not knowing exactly what priorities fall where.

It's a simple lesson, but a difficult creed, and I'm still not sure if the danger in taking an ordering of priorities to heart is more or less than its utility.

One kilogram does not equal 2.2 pounds

How you react to this statement tells me something, I think. If you've taken physics, you know that pounds are a unit of force, while kilograms are a unit of mass, and therefore, 2.2 pounds does not equal 1 kilogram. 1 kilogram of matter, on Earth, weighs 2.2 pounds (give or take a few small fractions; Earth's gravity field isn't quite uniform); on the moon, the same object will still mass one kilogram, while it will weigh only a few ounces.

So it's quite technically correct to say 1 kilogram doesn't equal 2.2 pounds. On the other hand, for all practical intents and purposes, that's the useful conversion to make, since the newton (metric unit of force) and the slug (standard imperial unit of mass) are more rarely used units.

Some people react with a nod. They're aware of the difference, and consider it an important one. Others react with a groan - they know that technically it's correct, but as far as they're concerned, the difference is a technical distinction that doesn't really matter. And a few become quite confused, because they don't know what the distinction is between weight and mass.

Patterns from nothing

Today is the day several people I know have a birthday. Five, according to Facebook, which informs me that I knew four of those in high school, no less - what a remarkable coincidence! - and two of them were reasonably good friends with each other, enough to share a five-way birthday party with several other nearby May-birthday friends.

Yet while it's quite unusual to have to have a couple of close friends from the same circle with a May 23rd birthday, it's hardly unusual to have two friends share the same birthday. By the time you know 23 birthdays, the odds are better than even that you know two people with shared birthdays. A remarkable coincidence - but of course, you're special, and you probably had to go through around 250 friends to find one who shared YOUR birthday.

We are inclined to recognize patterns in life. It's a useful skill, one that serves us well every day of our lives, but we're not always good judges of statistical significance, so sometimes we recognize patterns that are in fact simply random noise. This is where superstitions come from, and those little errant beliefs that aren't quite rational. Rationally, I know that having an ice-cold draft from the bar won't improve my motor control, but I swear, it seems to improve my bowling from atrocious to merely terrible!

Once we've picked out a pattern, and consciously identified it, we start to become emotionally attached to them. We've invested time and effort in it; every time you wear your lucky underpants and make out with a cute boy, you've reinforced the idea that they're lucky in your mind. When you wear them out and go home frustrated, you focus on another cause - a black cat, maybe a friend causing drama, there was something out there that interfered with your lucky underwear.

Psychologists have found intermittent reinforcement works very well, which might explain not only gambling addictions, but how doggedly we hang onto our curious patterns; medical doctors have found that delusion is remarkably effective at influencing how our bodies work. And there, we've come full circle. Most of the false patterns we see in life don't cause us much harm, and some even help us cope with the varied vagaries of life.

And who knows? Maybe a beer does relax me enough to let my cerebellum handle everything; maybe I treat my friend Terry like a little sister because I share a birthday with her big brother; and maybe, just maybe, your lucky sock makes you run just a little bit faster. But if you look hard enough for a pattern, one will emerge; whether it means anything or not is another matter entirely.