Fetzthechemist’s Weblog

If you give most lab scientists the Myers-Briggs personality typing tests, the vast bulk – usually in the range of two-thirds to three-quarters of us are INTJs. The degree of INTJism varies, but is often very strong among successful scientists.

That translates into being strongly opinionated. We believe we are in the know, that we understand and that are views are correct. That, however, does not mean our views are cast in concrete and immutable. Giving enough evidence, enough facts or clear explanation of opposing views, we will change ours. It just takes time and strong counter-convictions.

In the blogosphere this means I will state my opinion, which is a theory in progress. Your views can be different and still compatible. Your view can change mine, but I expect equal and balanced assessment of mine. INTJs need time to mull new information, to see how it fits into the known set of things. Then the changes come, the new opinion (theory) emerges. That is how we do good science, why we are good at science.

I just found a source of a few large PAHs that has pretty pictures of vacuum sublimed samples (the company makes these types of apparati, for you on the crystal making business).

http://www.kentax.de/Molecule-index.html

These are the beautiful PAHs terrylene (tribenzo[de,kl,rst]pentaphene) and dicoronylene.

The paranoid online people need to shut up until they have an issue to speak about intelligently.

ASCAP (the American Society for Composers, Authors, and Publishers), BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated, and other groups representing songwriters have sued ATT, Verizon, and other mobile-phone companies over what is claimed to be owed song royalties. It seems that the mobile-phone companies interpreted recent court ruling about digital downloads as not being public performances of music. So they stopped paying royalties to use and sell the songs as ringtones. More profit for them.

The composers’ groups have sued the mobile-phone companies to resume paying. The argument is that ringtones are not for private use only and should be covered by copyright laws. These groups are not suing and have said they have no plans to sue individual consumers, unlike the RIAA and the record companies.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, in their self-appointed role as protector of all things in cyberspace, hower, have stepped in and filed a brief saying that ASCAP and the other ought to be denied because it sets a precedent where they could sue individual consumers in the future. My opinion is that EFF ought to have talked to ASCAP, BMI, and the others and gotten a pledge or agreement that they would not do so. Instead they are out there grandstanding in an issue that does not involve the consumers they protect. They ought to be lambasting the phone companies for not paying royalties, yet also not lowering their prices for ringtones when the costs obviously went down. The people at EFF are downright off base here in way more ways than one.

The phone companies made $9 billion in worldwide ringtone sales, yet are too cheap to pay the composers of those songs and too greedy to give the consumers a break. EFF is wrong for fully supporting this greediness.

Usually when someone dies, you hear constant good comments about the person. So be it, a cultural custom in general. But for celebrities there usually is a mix of the good and any well-known negatives or scandals. For Michael Jackson, this lasted only for the Friday – the day of his death. By Saturday, for whatever reasons, the media had changed its tone to that of one of the greatest entertainers of all time has passed. Little mention anymore of his troubles, other than his extravagent spending. That was often softened by the question “Will there be enough left for his children?

Some people, Al Sharpton in particular, have gone so far as to say that Jackson’s negative image was just a result of the paparazzi and the usual implicit charge of racism Sharpton and such spew, that he was no freak, et cetera. Jackson’s personal life, even in the entertainment industry, was nigh onto bizarre. Surrogate mothers to give him offspring, who he all named after himself. Sleepover parties with young boys that he unabashedly admitted to – what other man in his late 40s would have gotten away with the claim these were all platonic?

Jackson was innovative as a singer, showman, and songwriter, but he was just that on the plus side. Otherwise, he was not anyone’s image of a role model. His icon status is akin to that of many TV, movie, and music stars who had tarnished personal lives – no less or no more, a musical star who was quite different as a person.

So Sarah Palin resigns from governor of Alaska after two and a half years. She cited not wanting to be a lame duck or not wanting to be a target of the media and her critics. This was the woman John McCain said could move into the executive office? Give me a break.

Palin’s illogical logic, out-of-skew thinking rings loud and clear. A first-term governor being a lame duck? Well, you are when you take the oath under that concept. No first term, no re-election needed. A media target or one for her critics? Try being in Hilary Clinton’s, Barack Obama’s, George W. Bush’s, Jimmy Carter’s, or Gerald Ford’s shoes lady. There have been dozens of high-level politicians who had it ten times worse than you ever did and folding the cards was not an option.

I hope this ditzy thinking cements Palin into her political grave…..but then again, the GOP is so desperate that it might not.

My state is in the annual budget deadlock, exacerbated by economic woes that dwindled taxes coming in and increased payouts. The Democrats are not blameless. They refuse to cut sacred-cow programs that are the bulk of the state budget. With such a huge deficit, there are no sacred cows. The lawmakers need to go back to basics, what we all do in our own lives when the budget gets tight. Then you get money in any reasonable way you can. You do not refuse to look at alternative ways to get money – you sell used books or CDs or things piled up in your garage. You clip coupons to stretch your grocery money. On the contrary hand, you cut back as much as you can. You stop eating out and cook modest meals at home. You go less to movies, concerts, sporting events and find cheaper entertainment. You look for bargains.

But this post focuses on one aspect of the state budget crisis that is the ugly secret of the GOP, that most of the counties in California that vote solidly Republican are also those that on a per capita basis get the most money from the state. The GOP in California has two main power bases, the more conservative region of southern California including San Diego and Orange county and the rural counties that are predominantly agricultural or timber-based historically. The first area gets and pays more or less what the Democratic areas – the urban areas like Los Angeles and the San Francisco bay area.

The rural counties love the GOP’s espousal of smaller government, fewer regulation, lower taxes. They also get state monies for a variety of reasons – farm subsidies, much cheaper water, support for school transportation, and much more. When the tax revenues for these counties is summed up and then compared to the sum of state funds paid out by county, these GOP-dominated counties all come out well ahead. The whole idea they promote is “I do not want the state to bother me, but I deserve all that I can get from them.” The deserve is the key. These counties are tax drains on the state, but promote the image that they are burdened.

In the budget solution, the cuts ought to be based on a per capita basis. Then these counties will whine about their disproportionate burden of the cuts, conveniently ignoring that they now get more per person.

Tomorrow, the 4th of July, will be another day of TEA parties through out the US. These supposedly have grown out of Ron Paul’s grassroots campaign for the Republican party nomination last year. Paul ran on a populist, more moderate form of Republican politics that harken back to the GOP of the 1960s, the party that had Rockefellers, Gerald Ford, John Lindsay. THE GOP last year totally i9gnored Ron Paul and took no cues from his popularity to change one whit.

But now his idea of tea parties, a play on the colonists protests against big-government control and intrusiveness, have become a conservative Republican movement. I went to one in my area, the San Francisco bay area, and watch interviews of participants in others nationwide. These are not populists. These are not moderates or libertarians (small l). These have generally been hard-core Bushites grousing about their loss of power and the bad change in government in the last year, i.e. one that is no longer archconservative, pro-big-business, pro-wealthy.

The TEA now stands for Taxed Enough Already. The people I talked with were upper middle class or wealthy people. Their idea of too much taxes is any tax they pay, period. They got theirs, so screw anyone wanting good schools, roads, whatever. A lot of the conversations I had and comments in interviews had little to do with big government – the Patriot Act is a landmark law protecting us. If it has been used predominantly for non-terror law enforcement, like tax evasion, so what? They would not accept that they might be the targets if the IRS decided their tax shelters needed invustigating and proceeded without warrants by relying on the Patriot Act provisions. They would not accept that the government can now wiretap them or search their snail mail and emails without a warrant. Ron Paul was against big government intrusion no matter the political philosophy behind it.

Ron Paul was for ending the war in Iraq. These TEA party participants still cling to the Dick Cheney claims that Iraq was about Al Qaida and weapons of mass destruction.

The various happenings lately give me a heightened sense that our society values posturing much more than any appearances of hypocracy. I am not really bothered when a politician has an affair or other “indiscretion”. Those are more personal matters and have little bearing on that person’s role. The puritanical nature of America’s electorate, however, has become much more tuned to that.

What bothers me, though, is those politicians who run aiming at those modern-day Puritans. The Christian right requires politicians who cater to them to avow the ten commandments. So if someone runs espousing those values, they ought to be held accountable. The hypocracy of such politicians is blatant. The Christian right blusters, but does not hold them accountable. Numerous politicians have been caught in affairs, taking bribes, embezzling funds, taking favors (a la Ted Stevens and his claims of unbeknowingly having hundreds of thousand of home improvements done by a lobbyist). One even was soliciting gay sex in the toilet of an airport! If all these conservative Republicans were forced to resign, the GOP would be even weaker than this low period now.

The whole steroids in baseball thing is another hypocracy, self-righteous blowharding by so called “baseball purists”. The huge bulk of the offenses were prior to the ban on steroid use. So not being illegal, the players broke no rules. Rant against baseball and the players union for delaying the ban, but the players might have bruised some unwritten purity code, but did not cheat. It was allowed. If people were so upset in the late 90s until 2004 when all this went on, they could have boycotted the sport. The rumors of steroid use were around then. Now it is just hindsight fingerpointing.

A third hypocracy is the Honduran situation. There was no coup. The presidents of Honduras serve one and only one term. It is in the constitution and inviolate, unamendable. The courts ruled such. The Congress there opposed any vote to change this. The (former) president proposed to still run his referendum unilaterally, without election monitoring or controls – since the election was ruled illegal, he was planning to have his supporters run the polls. Of course, he would have declared the peoples’ will to change the constitution and allow him more terms, then held similar votes to elect himself. That disobey of the constitutional process is being ignored by the US, EU, and other governments. He was elected to that first term and that is the only fact that matters. Democracy in action – hypocracy at work.

In an era of media spin and unobjective journalism, the media wheld too much power to mold opinions or to ride them in a ratings-winning strategy.

I finally read Salmon Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. I put it off because of all the hubbub, figuring that it could not be a good book. It must have gotten its noticce from the notoriety, right?

Well, it is an interesting read. All the things that were deemed blasphemous by the Ayatollah Khomeini were the fantastic visions of a man going insane. A secular Muslim who had sunconscious issues about sectarian strife in his native India and a muddle of ideas about Islam, Allah, and religion in general. Is it blasphemous? To fundamentalists, yes. But it is the raving version of an insane man, a paranoid schizophrenic. Do we take the ramblings of the insane to be valid views? Never! They are mentally unable to think clearly and rationally. Rushdie only had this character create a pseudo-world that is similar to the founding of Islam to add context to the insane visions. That character thought he was the archangel Gabriel.

Fundamental Christians get upset when stories use the name Jesus, although it is a common name in Hispanic culture. Literature is not truth telling. At its closest it might be allegory, but most often it is pure fiction.

Slow down! The first and foremost stumbling block for most people trying to listen is going too fast. Their minds race along, only partially paying attention. Often this is a chain of other thoughts triggered by the speaker or if in a conversation a response even as the topic is being framed. Solution?

Focus on the other person. Slow down and that allows you to pay full attention to the other person’s message. Often the message is led up to and not given in the first few sentences. This is especially true if the topic is a difficult one.

Save your responses, except for clarifying. This allows the other person an uninterrupted time to say what they want to. If you do not understand or something might be misunderstood, ask questions to get a clearer picture. Do not use this to divert the discussion to your own purposes.

Take notes unobtrusively. If you get a good idea, jot it down for your response or as a question. Lot the note enough to remind you, but do not take so much effort that it appears to be a lack of attention to the speaker.

Remember it’s a dialogue, not two alternating monologues. Too often, one person overrides and no exchange of ideas occurs. If two people get in this mode, then each says a lot, listens little, and ends up feeling something was missing. Sometimes this even translates into finding fault with each other, when both were doing the same poor listening.

What does increasing these skills gain you? If you listen better, your communications will be more efficient. This saves overall time and efforts. Rework, misunderstandings, missed deadlines, and poor coordination of efforts are some things you’ll avoid. Being a good listener can give you that edge to do better than others.

If you are a supervisor, you can learn to deal with problems sooner and better. Your team will soon recognize that you are paying attention to their needs and concerns. They will open up more and bring potential problems to you sooner, before they become crises. If you listen, a subordinate might be mollified just knowing you want to help. The advantages in a smoother operation are numerous – including a better performance review process. When was the last time an employee and you both looked forward to a performance review as an opportunity and as something worthwhile?