Biology Gilbert White on Instinct: stepping back from Nature 20 Jan 201320 Jan 2013 In the course of helping teach a “History of Nature” course for Sara Maroske just lately, I re-encountered Gilbert White’s lovely Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne, a classic of literature and field biology. As a philosopher I hadn’t read him closely as there is little abstract argument in it, but this… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design Leiter on Nagel on Meyer 11 Dec 2009 Brian Leiter gets it 100% right on Thomas Nagel’s ignorant review of the book by Stephen Meyer, of the intelligent design marketing agency, the Discovery [sic] Institute. Go read… Read More
Epistemology You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals 7 Apr 2010 The song of the title of this post is a catchy and highly amusing piece that suggests that if we’re just mammals we should have sex. It’s sort of a low brow version of Andrew Marvell’s To his coy mistress. Instead of Time’s wingéd chariot, we should do what mammals… Read More
I was educated at a Steiner school full of anthroposophical woo. Because the teachers were all homeopaths they had no idea how dangerous things were. I remember one teacher taking a teaspoon full of potassium cyanide out of a very rusty old tin and gleefully saying ‘we’ve enough here to kill off the whole school’. Oh, the fun we had. I learned a great dal about science there, often unsupervised, making my own equipment in a lab straight outta Hogwarts. Me and nitrogen tri-iodide… Happy days.
I never had a chemistry set but that didn’t stop me or my friends from building bombs ,flamethrowers and other weapons of mass destruction. When I was at boarding school one of my friends stripped the flesh off a dead rat to obtain the skeleton by dumping it in a bucket full of household bleach mixed with toilet cleaner. We put it out on the roof to avoid chocking on the chlorine fumes that poured off.
I think kids who grow up on farms still enjoy feeling that the whole world is their chemistry set. The things that can be done with literal tonnes of potato starch, or a bit of tar, or caustic soda. Of course, my cousin did blow the palm off his hand making some kind of improvised bomb… Possibly *actual* chemistry sets are the better option.
The universe will allow you to maim or kill yourself in all sorts of interesting and disgusting ways, if you really want to. The chemistry sets and homemade gunpowder of generations past are the least of them. Just look at the meth synthesis that some kids today attempt. Anhydrous ammonia? Pressurized reactions? And removing the lithium metal from those energizer batteries can get exiting.
The chemistry sets we had as kids, back in the 60’s, were pretty lame, but we still managed to make gunpowder with things we scrounged here and there. At least some drug stores in California would sell kids assorted chemicals. My one attempt at nitrogen tri-iodide wasn’t worth a damn, though. Anyone who waxes nostalgic about their teenage misadventures with chemistry would enjoy Oliver Sacks’ “Uncle Tungsten”, particularly the chapter “Stinks and Bangs.”
I once had a (chemically illiterate) Health and Safety officer ask me during a meeting at work: “do you have to use so many chemicals?”. I work in the pharmaceutical industry. As a synthetic chemist. In a chemistry lab. I replied that chemicals, and quite a few of them, were fairly necessary. To be fair to the poor bloke, he did mean “dangerous chemicals”, but that wasn’t what he said. That comment may have lived with him for a while…although I’m almost completely innocent of mentioning it. Almost. Louis
Brilliant pic! I gave up “practical chemistry” when I exploded myself (for the second time) with some HMTD. It’s a wonder I still have all my digits. The whole “terrorism” thing happened not long after that, so it’s probably a good job I quit when I did. Bloody terrorists spoiling all the fun…