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Friday, November 29, 2002


Infrared film shot with a #25, #19 or no filter, printed and toned twenty years ago, and scanned this morning:

Horseface ~ 'Shroom ~ South Central ~ Hardhat ~ Scarecrow
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Thursday, November 28, 2002

Over at A Man with a Ph.D., Richard Gayle thinks that work done at my Alma Mater by Devens Gust and others will have a greater impact than Craig Venter's frankenstein bid. In terms of technology, this is almost certainly true, but you've got to admit, creating an organism from chemicals in bottles is an amazing feat. But harnessing photosynthesis would certainly provide for technological advancements far beyond the simple inorganic processes we rely on today.

This interesting looking molecule is called a triad because it is made of three smaller molecules stuck together. It is one of several artificial biomolecules manufactured in Dr. Gust's laboratory at ASU. The long worm looking part on the right is a conjugated hydrocarbon chain about 25 carbon atoms long. Called a carotenoid polyene, this part acts as a wire, because alternating double and single bonds make up a molecular orbital that is as long as the carotenoid molecule. That type of molecular orbital (called a conjugated pi bond) can conduct electrons at nearly the speed of light.

You may remember molecular orbitals from the piece on halogen spectroscopy. Molecular orbitals form wherever electrons from atoms overlap when the atoms are bonded together in molecules. There are many more energy levels to molecular orbitals than in the original atomic orbitals. You can see this in the vertical bands of light and dark lines in the bromine and iodine spectra.

If nodes, that is the beginings and ends, of the molecular orbitals line up just right, the molecular orbital will conduct electrons. A conjugated system of pi bonds is just such a set of molecular orbitals. It is carbon's ability to form pi bonded and conjugated molecules that make it the ideal element to build such complex systems as living entities.

The "wire" molecule is attached to a porphyrin ring (a twenty carbon conjugated outer ring with a four nitrogen inner ring.) This part is similar to the structure of natural chlorofil in plants or hemaglobin in blood and it works like a capacitor: the inner nitrogen atoms have electrons that can be easily moved because they are in unbonded atomic orbitals of the nitrogen atoms. When those electrons are moved away from the center of the ring, the entire ring becomes positivly charged as the electrons from the outer ring surge in to take their place.

So far this structure looks like a very simple biomolecule. But on the opposite side of the porphyrin ring from the carotenoid chain is an entirely non-biological structure: a "Bucky Ball", also known as C-60 fullerene. Both names mention Buckminster Fuller, because the molecule is a tiny sphere made entirely of carbon atoms, each (pi) bonded to three other carbon atoms, like Fuller's invention, the geodesic dome. Like any conductive sphere, the fullerene can take extra electrons and 'spread them around' so the charge will stay on the sphere. This effect is familiar if you've ever rubbed a balloon on your shirt to make it stick to a wall.

Now you can see that this molecule will separate positive and negative charges, but what moves the electron out of the inner porphyrin ring in the first place? A beam of light - actually a single photon energizes the electron on one of the inner nitrogens and it jumps out of the ring and sticks to the sphere like a balloon to the wall. As the electrons surge in to the ring to neutralize the charge, the positive charge runs down the "wire" and the molecule becomes relatively stable with a positive end (the tip of the carotenoid 'wire') and a negative end (the fullerene ball.) Dr. Gust says that this molecule "stores a considerable fraction of the light energy as electrochemical potential energy." He believes these molecules lead the way toward bioelectronic devices.

Imagine now, if you will, a vat in a lab with huge (on a molecular scale) scorpion like molecules crawl around in nucleic and amino acids building genetic and cellular materials, until finally constructing a bioelectronic brain. Talk about Abbey Normal!
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Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Alaskan photographer, Phil Ackley has inspired me to put a Wratten 89B filter on my digital camera. Wow - this is even better than HIE film.

Here's another photo from my backyard.
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Rock and Mrs. Reagan in a scene from Doug Sirk's All that Heaven Allows.
In 1957 I was four and lived in a magic town with absolutely no problems. As winter approached, one of my earliest memories was of the trees and their magnificent color that only the north can provide. I have since studied history and know of the behind the scenes violence: the nuclear build-up, intense racism and rigidly intolerant social mores.

Some people, notably young idealists and intolerant social conservatives believe that the 1950's would be a good place for our nation to be. In Todd Haynes Far from Heaven the truth is illuminated to Cathy Wellington, a thirtysomething woman, blissfully married to successful advertising executive, Frank. I've never seen Julianne Moore before - she seemed to be built for the role, but it was several scenes before I recognized Dennis Quaid 'cause he looked just like an old boss.

Needless to say the movie popped all the bubbles, I mean damn! For the first forty five minutes, I thought I was back on Northlockwood Drive, mom was attending a modern art show and Elmer Bernstein's music was on the TV - the rest of it just fit right in. The first time I heard my dad say "fuck" it was about the electric bill, but the effect was the same: my sisters spontaneously burst into tears and the world wasn't ever as nice as it had been before.

If you've seen the preview, they've disinformed you that the movie is rather dull: it appears to be about a woman catching an unfaithful husband, but it's not about that at all. It flows seamlessly from scene to scene, the characters DO live in 1957. It is about Joan Miro, it's about saying "jeez", it's about living a guarded life and being different. But it's especially about knowing who you are, where you are going, what you want, then realizing that you can't have that.
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Monday, November 25, 2002



Phil Austin's Blog of the Unknown sez that the Firesign Theater will be performing on NPR on Thanksgiving day. Wow. Phil's both an original member of the group and a current member because he can be in two places at once. Couple this happening with the announcement of a new book by Hunter Thompson and I'm ready for an anti-war movement. We've even got a war, so c'mon! Let's protest it!

Next thing you know        
You got Uncle Sam's ass askin'  
To join the Army or        
What you do for their Navy.  

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And the winner is...


My attorney declares Domaine des Trois Coqs,
ie,
Land of the Three Cocks to be the best Nouveau
but I think it's the name. I prefer the offering from
Michel Picard.

There have been many articles in wine news circles [1 2 3 (that last one is a very informative article from the San Francisco Chronicle)] about the lack of profitability of our seasonal gouleyance, due largely to British dissatisfaction. Fortunately, in Arizona, there are many Nouveau bottles. I say old chaps, November comes but once a year! More tasting notes are available.
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Saturday, November 23, 2002

Beaujolais Nouveau 2002!

Louis Tête's Nouveau Villages has a perfect pairing in bleu cheddar topped with Plochmann's yellow mustard. Very Beaujolais! More tasting notes and labels are in the story.
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audio

Craig Venter, discoverer of the human genome and DNA archetect Hamilton Smith have a new project, described in this exerpt from the New Scientist:

It will build on research by Clyde Hutchison at TIGR and the University of North Carolina. He gradually stripped down the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium, a very simple bug that lives in the human genital tract.

In 1999, he reported that the bacterium could survive with as few as 265 of the 517 genes it normally has. This set of genes could be thought of as the minimum set required to construct a living organism, Hutchinson reported.

Venter says his team will focus initially on M genitalium. They will remove all the genetic material from the bacterium then synthesise an artificial chromosome, which they hope will contain the minimum number of genes needed for life. They will then insert this chromosome back inside the cellular shell. If this project is successful, the next aim will be to add new functions to the basic organism.

[link from John Robb]


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Friday, November 22, 2002

Beryllium and the Vreeland carbon arc visual spectroscope.

The spectrum of beryllium was especially challenging to obtain, prompting the use of an forty year old instrument, the Vreeland spectroscope. (You can still buy one!) With the spark from the spectroscope I was able to tease the spectrum out of elements that would rather glow in a flame and slowly oxidize than sparkle and emit their atomic line spectra. The Vreeland uses line current jumping between carbon rods to make an electrical flame that excites nearly all elements into emission.
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Thursday, November 21, 2002

Fireworks use calcium salts for orange red colors. Looking at the spectrum of burning calcium, you can see why:

Here are pictures and spectra of other alkaline earths.
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Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Chemistry and cake.


What's not to like?

From Annabel Jenner and Aimee Hartnell's Chemical Cookery.
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Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Leonid meteor shower:


Leonid   11/19/02, 12:37 pm GMT

On the advice of my attorney I set an alarm for 5am to shoot the sky, as NASA had predicted a huge meteoric turnout for the annual Leonid shower. I saw seven meteors in an hour of observing under a moonlight, light polluted sky with the eastern horizon obscured 30° by trees. This picture required extreme 'unsharp masking' to emphasize the meteor streak. Jupiter is in the center and Sirius at the top of this 8 second, f/3.3 full-frame fisheye exposure.
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Monday, November 18, 2002

Taz reminds me that it is Monday and Hunter Thompson has new article on his non-blog. There's an ad for a new book to come out in January that looks like new material, so I'm gonna buy it and then I'm gonna read it. - I am.

wKen likes raisinette so I'm voting for him for president in 2004. So does jennet.radio.

Amarone della Valpolicella

In fact, people have been enjoying wine made appassimento (from dried grapes) since the time of the Romans. This highly sought after, Port-ish wine comes from Italy just North of Verona and is known for it's intense richness. The label below is off a $10 @ Trader Joe's bottle that gives you a bargain taste, but I think it's no accident it comes from Conte di Bregonzo.


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As the sun's light traveled through our atmosphere yesterday just before sunset, it created a solar-atmospheric refraction effect known as sundogs, or parhelia, two bright spots 22° from the sun:

The picture above shows the northern dog, and it appears to be a vertical pillar of light. Here is a link to a photo of both sundogs, the northern and the southern parhelion which looks like a horizontal bar.

Les Cowley has an excellent website detailing atmospheric optics that is certainly worth a visit, and Ned Rozell has written this very accessable short explanation of sundogs.
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Sunday, November 17, 2002

Separated at birth?
A poodle's headAn exploding star

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Separated at birth?
BromineRaisinette

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Saturday, November 16, 2002

Astrophotographs


Luna 11/15/02
6" f/5 Schwaar, 4.7mm Nagler objective
Nikon 950 1/60 sec. f/3.5


Jupiter 11/16/02
7" f/15 Maksutov, 12mm Nagler II objective
Nikon 950 1/4 sec. f/3.5


Saturn 11/16/02
7" f/15 Maksutov, 12mm Nagler II objective
Nikon 950 1/4 sec. f/3.5


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Friday, November 15, 2002

Little Science:

Bromine's spectrum shows movement of electrons within molecular orbitals created by the two bromine atoms that make up the bromine molecule, Br2:

I made this and other spectra with a low tech spectroscope, decribed in this story about taking halogen spectrograms. What!?
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Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Ferment Finale!

One week after opening my bottle of raisinette, it is still consumable, although it tastes very well aged. I would not drink it at this point, except that it is my child, so one last glass goes down...

It delivers an intense buzz and is quite probably poisonous, especially now. The overwhelming acid has left the elixir, leaving it with fruit galore, yet the raisin taste is nicely suppressed. The lees at the bottom of the bottle impart a nutty, bread-like aroma and a decidedly not-sweet flavor. At three dollars (well, maybe four, but who's counting) for one 750 mL bottle, this is definitely the bargain drink I was after. The good taste is a surprising bonus, one that I will try to emphasize in my next batch.

One change I'm trying next time is to fine with dolomite prior to a second transfer. This will (hopefully) remove the cloudiness and (possibly) reduce the acid through direct neutralization, as dolomite is made of calcium magnesium carbonate, a mild base. I have never fined before, so this will be a new experience. I will report on the result here, but I have no timetable for a new batch of raisinette because it is almost time for Beaujolais Nouveau.

That now famous French experimental wine is made by a rather curious process quite unlike the quick fermentation I did to the raisins. Gamay grapes are harvested and placed whole into wine vats without crushing. Some of the grapes break under the weight of the pile and the juice comes in contact with natural yeast on the skins of the grape. An envelope of carbon dioxide fills the vat causing a curious enzymatic reaction to take place. Sugars are broken down within the whole grapes under the carbon dioxide atmosphere without the assistance of a micro-organism, such as yeast. This can continue up to about seven percent alcohol - at this point the vinters usually crush the grapes and ferment the rest of the sugar in the normal way. This process, called carbonic maceration, seems to be the origin of Nouveau's bubblegum-like flavor that we seek. Well, that some of us seek anyway.

The entire story of Raisinette is published here in chronological order for easy reading. Follow the simple recipe and you too can be fizzing up cheap hooch!
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Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Government Day, an adventure.

Yesterday was Veteran's Day. My friend, nature photographer Heather McLaughlin, wanted to find a rattlesnake.

Here is the story...
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Saturday, November 9, 2002

Sirius the dog star, is a close type A1 star and it's the brightest star in the northern hemisphere's sky. It's the bright star in the left half of the picture below. You can find it easily if you recognize the constellation Orion in the sky. Sirius, in Canus Major, follows Orion just to the East.

When observed through a short focus (f/5) telescope fitted with an ocular prism, hydrogen absorbtion can be easily seen in the spectrum:

For comparison, here is the emission spectrum of hydrogen:


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Ferment update:

The above illustration is from Yair Margalit's Concepts in Wine Chemistry published by the Wine Appreciation Guild.

Yeast secrete the enzymes that carry out these reactions. One yeast can convert one hundred thousand sugar molecules to alcohol per second. My raisin fermentation produced 120-150 grams of ethanol in about three days from 280 grams of sugar (from the raisin's nutritional label). I must have had about 10,000,000,000,000 yeast cells in the fermentation pot. Wow!
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Thursday, November 7, 2002

In a statement of not yet acceptance, govenor almost elect Janet Napolitano said that there is not much difference between a centerist Democrat and a moderate Republican. Why then even make the distinction?

All this politics creates a need for levity, and there isn't much that's lighter than helium:

Due to the election, it's the element of the week.
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The Arizona election is not as good as it looks from the top. Although we've got an incoming Democratic govenor and attorney general, most of the other offices, including the corporation commission, which is supposed to look out for consumers of regulated utilities, have gone Republican like the rest of the nation. People's utility bills must have been too low.

We also voted to give our sheriff enough jails so everyone in the state can have a bed there. There's a new 'special' right for all the new 'Trend Franks'* conservatives: the right to fall in line.

If only the me too Republicans, I mean Democrats had stood for something, we might have gotten more than 37% of us out to vote, but when there is no choice, there will be no choosing. Now hurry up and go visit Phil Ackley's Alaska cause it's gonna look like Long Beach soon, with oil pumps on every block.

* Recall that Trent Franks, now an Arizona congressman elect, campaigned by spamming, even as far away as Germany.
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Wednesday, November 6, 2002

The unofficial results of the Arizona election are in:

Govenor: Johnette Napolitano* (Dem)
Secretary of State: Jan Brewer (Rep)
Attorney General: Terry Goddard (Dem)

Prop 104 (school money): Pass
Props 200, 201 (more gambling): Fail
Prop 202 (casinos on reservations): Pass
Prop 203 (regulate drugs): Fail

Judge Joseph Heilman: Retained!

It's really Janet, and she does sing, but I love Concrete Blonde so Arizona's Gonna Rock!
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Ferment Update!

(The whole story has been collected here.)

The raisin beverage has been in the fridge for nearly a week now and it's looking pretty clear. Clear enough to drink anyway (although I wouldn't want to bottle it yet.) So drink it I shall, since it's election day, and this being Arizona, you can't buy so much as a beer. (The states founding fathers wisely saw that the politicians would get us all drunk on election day, so they dried up the state for a day.)

Here's the bottle of juice:

And here I am, tasting the stuff:

And liking it:

Tasting notes:

The beverage is acidic, almost as much as grapefruit juice. There seems to be no volatile acidity (vinegar) though, so it presents no fault. It is fruity yet too tart to be sweet, with a decidedly appley nose. The aforementioned acid dominates the first sip, but quickly gives way to a complex mix of fruit - citrus and plum - which dissipates into a roasted grassyness. It is not at all unpleasant, and if left to stabilize for a month or so, I'm sure the acid would have become tame.

Rather than just rely on my bare buds, I tasted the liquor with a number of foods:

Beef Jerky: acid overrides the meat but mellows quickly.

Celery: surprisingly, a nice accompanyment to this otherwise bland vegetable

Chese: it blends right in with a Colby, a sharp cheddar would also be nice

BBQ Chicken: I thought this would work, but instead it was a bitter clash.

Apple: no good.

I also tried Spanish Peanuts and the result emphasized the vegital finish of the beverage, quite nice.

Three bucks and two weeks for one bottle of very passable hooch. Not bad, and fermenting alcohol is one of the most spiritual processes a human can undertake. Now I want to hear about Andy's beer!
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Tuesday, November 5, 2002

My vote was between one quarter and one half percent of the total for my precint. That is raw power, and why many of my candidates have won. Yes, I picked some in the booth. There was a superior court judge named Joseph Heilman that I voted to retain just because of his name.
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Wken reminds us that, since so many citizens will not vote today, our vote is amplified. Excellent. Now if only there was someone I wanted to vote for!
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Monday, November 4, 2002

Here and Now's Steve Almond recommends reading Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail for clarity and ideaism on the election process, even though the author was "drunk or something" throughout the book. That's right, and I shall.

PS. Maybe HST is still on the cutting edge.
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Space pundit, James Oberg will write a thirty thousand word piece that denys the allegation that the Apollo moon landings were faked by NASA, which is paying for the article according to Ted Streuli of The Daily News. This is a straight forward presentation of facts that prove that twelve astronauts did indeed walk on the moon from 1969 to 1972, right? No, this is not a simple case of Science vs. Superstition because a very real source of doubt exists in the minds of Americans.

In order to be rid of this "conspiracy theory", our government must do more than pick a few holes in the fake landing evidence. The record of the landings must be complete and completely convincing. We have seen this government lie and cover-up too often to take their word for anything. Although I watched all the landings live, I want to see the proof too.

Belief in a fake moon landing is not a case of incursion of false logic into the realm of science, it is distrust of a lying government. [pointer from Der Schockwellenreiter]
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Saturday, November 2, 2002

At 4:30 this morning, I looked east up the street and saw the moon had just risen over an empty field. The new moon happens day after tomorrow, and this crescent is all that is left of October's harvest moon.

Wow! That picture was taken with a Nikon 950 hand-held to the eyepiece of a dobsonian reflector telescope. (6" f/5 with a 32 mm. Erfle eyepiece, 1/30 sec. exposure)

I'm feeling pretty confident of my hand holding abilities, so I trained the scope on Jupiter. The image was more difficult to obtain, because the scope magnification was much higher, and, since the scope is a dobsonian, it does not track the sky.

(6" f/5 with a 4.7 mm. Nagler eyepiece, 1/4 sec. exposure)
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Friday, November 1, 2002

You can never have enough sodium spectra, as indicated by the continuing search engine referers. This image, taken with a Nikon 990 hand-held to the eyepiece of a Vreeland emission spectroscope, shows the doublet nature of the sodium D line:


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As an amateur scientist, I am often exposed to interesting works. I have recently received several copies of amateur physicist Gong BingXin's Uncertainty Principle is Untenable in which Heisenberg's basic principle of quantum mechanics is deconstructed using two modest thought experiments.

Although the approach is naive, it has caused me to think about this idea that has been the causative basis for our understanding of the universe at it's most fundamental level. Uncertainty means that, on a very tiny scale, location and energy are connected and variable without regard to imposed constraints.


Cartoon by John Richardson, 1998

For example, an electron's position cannot be determined exactly when it's energy is known precisely. Since the energy of an electron is well defined when it is in an orbital in an atom, we can only state the probability of it's location. By using Heisenberg's matrices (or other techniques) a map of the probabilities of the electron's presence can be drawn. These are the curious shapes of the atomic orbitals that vex college students so.

These shapes determine all the properties that make the physical world the way it is. Unless Dr. Gong can show some explanation for everything uncertainty explains, his argument does not further our understanding, and is not good science.
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Last update: 9/30/03; 11:22:49 AM.