Henry II made Thomas Becket, his friend, Archbishop of Canterbury, hoping no doubt that Becket would follow Henry’s will. Becket did not.
Neil made me CEO of AB Automotive in 1996 expecting me to carry on as he did. I did not. In many ways, I did not follow Neil’s way but set my own course, did things differently and this led to months and months of conflict. He gave me a very poor assessment after 6 months. There was a box in which I was allowed to make my own comments. I just said, ‘Mr Rodgers has not judged my effectiveness objectively. He has simply judged me according to whether or not I did it his way.’
I just carried on in my way and eventually it worked out and we are friends. Henry and Becket did not and Becket was murdered. Unlike me though, Becket was later canonised.
Simple lesson here. However much you love and admire your successor, never ever expect them to do it your way for by virtue of the very quality of the abilities you admired in them, they will do it their way. Accept it.
Wednesday 24 February 2010
Wednesday 17 February 2010
Cock on fire
Once and only once in my life did I go to the toilet to urinate after I had been chopping chillies and not washing my hands beforehand.
An unforgettable experience.
An unforgettable experience.
Thursday 11 February 2010
Bells
If you have never rung them, big bells I mean, then you will never understand. They are quite simply glorious. Unlike other musical instruments, ringing bells make their sound on the move and that gives their sound a special quality not found in static instruments. Add to the fact that they do not generate a single note but several.
In ringing bells, you get many notes of differing intensity, the key ones being:
Strike – that’s the main note generated from the clapper striking the sound bow.
Hum – that’s an octave below the strike
Tierce – minor third above the strike
Nominal – 4 notes above the strike although some would argue that it is an octave above the strike
Quince – 5 notes above the strike
Older bells were not tuned to give all these notes by skimming metal off the bell. In the latter part of the 19th century, a Canon by the name of Simpson came up with this idea. People still argue about the idea, some saying it’s fine, others saying that only the strike counts.
High speed photography will show a bell contracting and expanding in different parts after the strike. I don’t care; I always think a well tuned bell sounds lovely.
And of course, they have to be made of 80% copper and 20% tin. Muck around with that proportion much and it will be disastrous.
In ringing bells, you get many notes of differing intensity, the key ones being:
Strike – that’s the main note generated from the clapper striking the sound bow.
Hum – that’s an octave below the strike
Tierce – minor third above the strike
Nominal – 4 notes above the strike although some would argue that it is an octave above the strike
Quince – 5 notes above the strike
Older bells were not tuned to give all these notes by skimming metal off the bell. In the latter part of the 19th century, a Canon by the name of Simpson came up with this idea. People still argue about the idea, some saying it’s fine, others saying that only the strike counts.
High speed photography will show a bell contracting and expanding in different parts after the strike. I don’t care; I always think a well tuned bell sounds lovely.
And of course, they have to be made of 80% copper and 20% tin. Muck around with that proportion much and it will be disastrous.
Sunday 7 February 2010
Frozen Planet
In 2011, the BBC will launch a nature series called Frozen Planet, understandably a documentary about the Arctic and the Antarctic. It has been 4 years in the making. Look out for it for I am sure it will capture the most beautiful places on this Earth. And then perhaps you will understand why I went and in the case of Antarctica, twice.
Guild Gazette
This was the student newspaper at Liverpool University and it came out once a fortnight. I joined it in my final year, first as the pop music correspondent and eventually as Assistant Editor. We were lucky in two respects.
Firstly, we were subject to censorship in that all copy had to be submitted to the Vice-Chancellor prior to publication. I don’t recall him interfering much, if not at all. However we were registered as a newspaper so we could legitimately claim to be Britain’s only censored newspaper. This we exploited with a banner across the top of the front page proclaiming ‘Britain’s only censored newspaper.’ So we had a campaign to flaunt.
Secondly, we were very fortunate to have an editor who had previously worked on a proper newspaper, the Huddersfield Advertiser. Paul brought in professionalism to writing and editing and we all learned a lot from him. He changed the layout to a tabloid and modelled it on the Daily Mirror. Many looked down on the Mirror in the early 60’s: many still do. But then as he pointed out, the Mirror was the newspaper of the working classes and had to get its message home simply but with a punch. Think we did that.
He also brought colour, just orange, on the front and back pages. That meant two passes through the printing machine but it also meant that we could charge a little more for coloured adverts on the back page and that covered the costs. Our advertisers never realised that since we were using orange on the front page then orange on the back page had no on-cost.
Since the paper came out fortnightly and there were no PC’s in those days and we all had lectures to attend, we were very busy. This meant that we had to get the copy written, the photographs collected and all down to the printers very quickly. Then we had to collect the galley prints and proof read them as quickly as possible in order to meet the final print deadline.
It was all worth it for in 1965, we won ‘The Best Student Newspaper of the Year’ award and the Vice-Chancellor removed his censorship.
Maybe, if I had paid more attention to my studies, then I would have got a better degree. But then, I would probably have had a different career path and I doubt that that would have been as much fun as the one I have had. And anyway, Guild Gazette was an experience.
(Our Student's Union had a capacity of around 2 to 3,000 for Saturday night dances so that meant we could hire pretty much anyone to play there. As pop music correspondent, my job was to interview them in the bar during the interval. I even had an expense allowance to buy them a pint each. How else do you get to have the likes of the Hollies and the Animals to yourself?)
Firstly, we were subject to censorship in that all copy had to be submitted to the Vice-Chancellor prior to publication. I don’t recall him interfering much, if not at all. However we were registered as a newspaper so we could legitimately claim to be Britain’s only censored newspaper. This we exploited with a banner across the top of the front page proclaiming ‘Britain’s only censored newspaper.’ So we had a campaign to flaunt.
Secondly, we were very fortunate to have an editor who had previously worked on a proper newspaper, the Huddersfield Advertiser. Paul brought in professionalism to writing and editing and we all learned a lot from him. He changed the layout to a tabloid and modelled it on the Daily Mirror. Many looked down on the Mirror in the early 60’s: many still do. But then as he pointed out, the Mirror was the newspaper of the working classes and had to get its message home simply but with a punch. Think we did that.
He also brought colour, just orange, on the front and back pages. That meant two passes through the printing machine but it also meant that we could charge a little more for coloured adverts on the back page and that covered the costs. Our advertisers never realised that since we were using orange on the front page then orange on the back page had no on-cost.
Since the paper came out fortnightly and there were no PC’s in those days and we all had lectures to attend, we were very busy. This meant that we had to get the copy written, the photographs collected and all down to the printers very quickly. Then we had to collect the galley prints and proof read them as quickly as possible in order to meet the final print deadline.
It was all worth it for in 1965, we won ‘The Best Student Newspaper of the Year’ award and the Vice-Chancellor removed his censorship.
Maybe, if I had paid more attention to my studies, then I would have got a better degree. But then, I would probably have had a different career path and I doubt that that would have been as much fun as the one I have had. And anyway, Guild Gazette was an experience.
(Our Student's Union had a capacity of around 2 to 3,000 for Saturday night dances so that meant we could hire pretty much anyone to play there. As pop music correspondent, my job was to interview them in the bar during the interval. I even had an expense allowance to buy them a pint each. How else do you get to have the likes of the Hollies and the Animals to yourself?)
Saturday 6 February 2010
Climate change and global warming
I am really confused on this one but, of this I am certain, the issues are clouded by poor scientific rigour, vested interests and a lack of a satisfactory climate model. Taking the last one first, there are so many variables affecting the climate of this planet even at the macro level that we fall short of making reliable predictions for the near to medium term, let alone the long term. Much the same as economics actually. We simply don't have an effective long term model that encompasses all the variables.
Tonight on the BBC News, we hear that the British public is becoming more disillusioned about man made effects on climate change AND global warming. However, the first question asked of the public put the two together which is utter crap; a question so poorly phrased that it inevitably lead to a misleading answer. I do not deny that over time, a few centuries or more that one may link one with the other but right now I believe it is important to consider the two separately.
Global warming? Yes as a graduate chemist I know that Carbon Dioxide will absorb the infra red rays emitted from the planet and, in effect it will act as a blanket keeping heat in the lower atmosphere and on the surface. In the long run, all other factors being neutral, the rise in CO2 which is said to be at record levels, will lead to global warming.
The trouble is all the other factors are not neutral. Our climate and our weather are influenced by so many things. The CO2 may well try to warm us up but other forces are at work. Read this if you will:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html
The argument here is that the oceans are a powerful force shaping our climate. Isn’t that bloody obvious? Most people have heard of El Nino even if they have heard of no other ocean current. The commentary on cyclical mini ice ages has a special appeal to me. I know this is only anecdotal but I kept a record of my hill walks over 20+ years and noted the shift in the seasons. Only later did I hear meteorologists confirm my conclusions.
Go to sunspots. We know what they are but we are not too sure of their effects on climate. We have just pulled out of one of the greatest solar sunspot minima in decades and we have no clue as to what the next cycle will bring in terms of sunspots or their effect.
Another anecdote if you care to indulge me. I went to Svalbard in 2006 and landed at the island of Kvitoya. They said that the free water north of Svalbard was remarkable and evidence of global warning. Maybe but it was free of ice in the 1890’s when balloonists were trapped and died there because they could not reach the mainland. And anyway as the Daily Mail article I cited above says, the Arctic ice has been growing for the past 3 years. Don’t believe me? Go to NOAA and the others.
Before moving on to vested interests, let’s look at our politicians. In most countries only a paltry few of them have any scientific background at all. Tell them that climate change is subject to 49 or so variables and that you need several supercomputers to sort it with no guarantee of success and you have them flummoxed. These are not unintelligent people so a simple description of the IR absorption of CO2 and its growing level will be easy for them to buy in to and give support to CO2 reduction. And then, of course, politicians being politicians will react in the only way they know how. Smack the public with a stick and raise some taxes. Flight taxes are horrendous these days but I have no idea where the money goes to reduce or offset CO2 emissions. Booked a couple of air miles flights recently and the tax was a staggering €250 each way.
So to vested interests and there are many of these. You get the scientific institutions like our discredited University of East Anglia who are dining out (literally) on government grants to look at the ‘problem’. They also get to go to great conferences in nice parts of the world. Let’s have the next conference in Malawi in a hut and eat like the locals.
We have in the UK something called the Carbon Trust which is something to do with reducing C02 emissions in the UK. Well, as Tony Blair said a few years ago, ‘If Britain ceased all CO2 emissions tomorrow; China would put it all back in 2 years.’ Not my favourite politician but that makes a lot of sense.
Then I get the airlines trying to look nice and asking me for money for my ‘carbon offset’ for my next flight. The money is supposed to go to ‘green projects’ but I see scant evidence of where it goes. When did you last hear of the money going to the Amazon or Indonesia to evict the loggers and plant 100,000 sq. miles of new forest?
And no show would be complete without the voice of farmers, a sector of society (in the West at least) whose hand is the first out for any subsidy going. Now I am being told to support them and not eat strawberries in winter because they have been flown in from Kenya. Do I honestly want to go back to the days of the poor fruit and veg they served us in the 50’s? No.
And finally scientific rigour. This is quite disgusting possibly for reasons noted above and vanity or maybe ignorance. Once I went to an Open Night at my son’s school and there in the chem. lab were a bunch of kids testing the pH (acidity or alkalinity) of common substances we found around the home. Nice I said, so what is the pH of the water you are using. ‘7’ they cheerfully said for pH7 is neutral. ‘Go on and test some plain water,’ I said, which they did. The result was pH4 which is slightly acid. They were shocked. Quite simply, their teacher had failed to teach them first to test their starting point. Well, if you cannot teach them scientific rigour when they are young, what chance do you have when they are older and habits have become ingrained?
As for vanity. Scientists are always vying to publish papers, maybe even cause a sensation and most certainly gain honours. As my Prof at UMIST said to me, the numbers of papers you publish are a key factor on the road to promotion. Malcolm did not earn his professorship on the number of papers he published; he published a few. He earned his position with a reputation for meticulous and rigorous research. Pity there are not more like him.
As my dad told me, quoting Shakespeare, ‘To thine own self be true.’
My position here is very simple:
Yes, growing CO2 emissions might well lead to global warming BUT climate change is subject to many other forces and they will remain for the forseeable future to be the shapers of our weather.
You may also care to read my notes on the Permian Extinction written in Dec 10, 2008. Sure global warming killed off 95% of all species on this planet. It just took 100,000 years to do it.
I don’t know the answer here but I do know there is a heck of a lot more work to be done.
Footnote: In all this noise, you hear little about the acidification of the oceans. Somewhere I read that the oceans absorb around 30% to 50% of the CO2 and slowly their pH is diminishing, albeit only by decimals. However some scientists claim that the rate of absorption is slowing down indicating saturation. If the CO2 absorption continued, some argue that it will have a damaging effect on carbonate creatures like corals. But then again if absorption is genuinely slowing down, the increase in atomspheric CO2 will get faster. Now there could an argument here for reducing CO2 emissions. But then, this isn't headline stuff, is it? And anyway, we need more good science.
Tonight on the BBC News, we hear that the British public is becoming more disillusioned about man made effects on climate change AND global warming. However, the first question asked of the public put the two together which is utter crap; a question so poorly phrased that it inevitably lead to a misleading answer. I do not deny that over time, a few centuries or more that one may link one with the other but right now I believe it is important to consider the two separately.
Global warming? Yes as a graduate chemist I know that Carbon Dioxide will absorb the infra red rays emitted from the planet and, in effect it will act as a blanket keeping heat in the lower atmosphere and on the surface. In the long run, all other factors being neutral, the rise in CO2 which is said to be at record levels, will lead to global warming.
The trouble is all the other factors are not neutral. Our climate and our weather are influenced by so many things. The CO2 may well try to warm us up but other forces are at work. Read this if you will:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html
The argument here is that the oceans are a powerful force shaping our climate. Isn’t that bloody obvious? Most people have heard of El Nino even if they have heard of no other ocean current. The commentary on cyclical mini ice ages has a special appeal to me. I know this is only anecdotal but I kept a record of my hill walks over 20+ years and noted the shift in the seasons. Only later did I hear meteorologists confirm my conclusions.
Go to sunspots. We know what they are but we are not too sure of their effects on climate. We have just pulled out of one of the greatest solar sunspot minima in decades and we have no clue as to what the next cycle will bring in terms of sunspots or their effect.
Another anecdote if you care to indulge me. I went to Svalbard in 2006 and landed at the island of Kvitoya. They said that the free water north of Svalbard was remarkable and evidence of global warning. Maybe but it was free of ice in the 1890’s when balloonists were trapped and died there because they could not reach the mainland. And anyway as the Daily Mail article I cited above says, the Arctic ice has been growing for the past 3 years. Don’t believe me? Go to NOAA and the others.
Before moving on to vested interests, let’s look at our politicians. In most countries only a paltry few of them have any scientific background at all. Tell them that climate change is subject to 49 or so variables and that you need several supercomputers to sort it with no guarantee of success and you have them flummoxed. These are not unintelligent people so a simple description of the IR absorption of CO2 and its growing level will be easy for them to buy in to and give support to CO2 reduction. And then, of course, politicians being politicians will react in the only way they know how. Smack the public with a stick and raise some taxes. Flight taxes are horrendous these days but I have no idea where the money goes to reduce or offset CO2 emissions. Booked a couple of air miles flights recently and the tax was a staggering €250 each way.
So to vested interests and there are many of these. You get the scientific institutions like our discredited University of East Anglia who are dining out (literally) on government grants to look at the ‘problem’. They also get to go to great conferences in nice parts of the world. Let’s have the next conference in Malawi in a hut and eat like the locals.
We have in the UK something called the Carbon Trust which is something to do with reducing C02 emissions in the UK. Well, as Tony Blair said a few years ago, ‘If Britain ceased all CO2 emissions tomorrow; China would put it all back in 2 years.’ Not my favourite politician but that makes a lot of sense.
Then I get the airlines trying to look nice and asking me for money for my ‘carbon offset’ for my next flight. The money is supposed to go to ‘green projects’ but I see scant evidence of where it goes. When did you last hear of the money going to the Amazon or Indonesia to evict the loggers and plant 100,000 sq. miles of new forest?
And no show would be complete without the voice of farmers, a sector of society (in the West at least) whose hand is the first out for any subsidy going. Now I am being told to support them and not eat strawberries in winter because they have been flown in from Kenya. Do I honestly want to go back to the days of the poor fruit and veg they served us in the 50’s? No.
And finally scientific rigour. This is quite disgusting possibly for reasons noted above and vanity or maybe ignorance. Once I went to an Open Night at my son’s school and there in the chem. lab were a bunch of kids testing the pH (acidity or alkalinity) of common substances we found around the home. Nice I said, so what is the pH of the water you are using. ‘7’ they cheerfully said for pH7 is neutral. ‘Go on and test some plain water,’ I said, which they did. The result was pH4 which is slightly acid. They were shocked. Quite simply, their teacher had failed to teach them first to test their starting point. Well, if you cannot teach them scientific rigour when they are young, what chance do you have when they are older and habits have become ingrained?
As for vanity. Scientists are always vying to publish papers, maybe even cause a sensation and most certainly gain honours. As my Prof at UMIST said to me, the numbers of papers you publish are a key factor on the road to promotion. Malcolm did not earn his professorship on the number of papers he published; he published a few. He earned his position with a reputation for meticulous and rigorous research. Pity there are not more like him.
As my dad told me, quoting Shakespeare, ‘To thine own self be true.’
My position here is very simple:
Yes, growing CO2 emissions might well lead to global warming BUT climate change is subject to many other forces and they will remain for the forseeable future to be the shapers of our weather.
You may also care to read my notes on the Permian Extinction written in Dec 10, 2008. Sure global warming killed off 95% of all species on this planet. It just took 100,000 years to do it.
I don’t know the answer here but I do know there is a heck of a lot more work to be done.
Footnote: In all this noise, you hear little about the acidification of the oceans. Somewhere I read that the oceans absorb around 30% to 50% of the CO2 and slowly their pH is diminishing, albeit only by decimals. However some scientists claim that the rate of absorption is slowing down indicating saturation. If the CO2 absorption continued, some argue that it will have a damaging effect on carbonate creatures like corals. But then again if absorption is genuinely slowing down, the increase in atomspheric CO2 will get faster. Now there could an argument here for reducing CO2 emissions. But then, this isn't headline stuff, is it? And anyway, we need more good science.
Friday 5 February 2010
Sacking people
This is never easy and mercifully I have done it little. Yes I have had at times to do it but it is distasteful for the manager and cruel for the recipient.
All but one of my 'sacking's were redundancies which is to say part of a company wide headcount reduction as a consequence of economic circumstances. However, you cannot blame it totally on economics. You have to ask yourself if you were not a little complacent on hiring people in the good times.
When I first got the CEO's job and Head Office told me to fire 20 people, I fiddled things in every way possible. Like we have 6 approved vacancies and 3 people have handed their notice in so you only need 11 to satisfy your forecasts. Worked most times. But then you have to get down to it. Made the mistake the first time by trying to do it democratically. Sat with each director and talked about who might go or what numbers from his department. And what do you end up with? No numbers, no names.
Moved on to a different tack. Sat them in the boardroom and told them you sit here until you get me the numbers. Then left them to it. Think I had to do that on two other occasions - worked each time.
The only guy I personally sacked was absolutely bloody useless. My fault for not seeing that at interview. Thought he was going to have a heart attack but he didn't nor did he hit me.
All but one of my 'sacking's were redundancies which is to say part of a company wide headcount reduction as a consequence of economic circumstances. However, you cannot blame it totally on economics. You have to ask yourself if you were not a little complacent on hiring people in the good times.
When I first got the CEO's job and Head Office told me to fire 20 people, I fiddled things in every way possible. Like we have 6 approved vacancies and 3 people have handed their notice in so you only need 11 to satisfy your forecasts. Worked most times. But then you have to get down to it. Made the mistake the first time by trying to do it democratically. Sat with each director and talked about who might go or what numbers from his department. And what do you end up with? No numbers, no names.
Moved on to a different tack. Sat them in the boardroom and told them you sit here until you get me the numbers. Then left them to it. Think I had to do that on two other occasions - worked each time.
The only guy I personally sacked was absolutely bloody useless. My fault for not seeing that at interview. Thought he was going to have a heart attack but he didn't nor did he hit me.
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Being happy
I have to tell you that this world is so funny. I giggle and laugh so many times every day.
But research seems to tell us that kids laugh so much more than adults. Is that not so sad?
Despite all the wars and the cruelty, this world is so full of wonder. Yes I see the news but it does not faze me. Haiti is quite awful and few are smiling. But they will.
Soon it will be Spring in the UK. So then you just have to walk out on your street and see the new shoots on the trees. Give them a little while and they will be buds and then leaves or flowers will follow.
Go to the supermarket and see the little tot at the checkout. Some I could cheerfully smack but for the most part, they are lovely
Better still, talk to the checkout people, talk about the day. It brightens your life and I am sure it brightens theirs.
You don’t have to travel the world to be happy. You just have to walk this world in happiness and people will do the same.
But research seems to tell us that kids laugh so much more than adults. Is that not so sad?
Despite all the wars and the cruelty, this world is so full of wonder. Yes I see the news but it does not faze me. Haiti is quite awful and few are smiling. But they will.
Soon it will be Spring in the UK. So then you just have to walk out on your street and see the new shoots on the trees. Give them a little while and they will be buds and then leaves or flowers will follow.
Go to the supermarket and see the little tot at the checkout. Some I could cheerfully smack but for the most part, they are lovely
Better still, talk to the checkout people, talk about the day. It brightens your life and I am sure it brightens theirs.
You don’t have to travel the world to be happy. You just have to walk this world in happiness and people will do the same.
Being lucky
A lot of people think I am lucky. Indeed I feel the same myself. I have this innate feeling that this world will be kind to me and I dare say that statistically I have been more often lucky than unlucky. Of course this perception depends on what you want out of life so maybe we look at a few aspects.
Money
Health
Kids
Education
Travel
Love
Peace and contentment
Space
Friendship
Gadgets
Food availability
Well, when I cast my eyes down that list then I do indeed feel I have been lucky. There may have been bad moments but the good outweigh the bad. At least, I think so.
So is there a reason why I am lucky? Never really thought about it until I read some report, American, of course. They said that you cannot be consistently lucky at things which are pure chance. Interesting because I have only played roulette twice and I won both times – not with that black/red stuff or even odd/even numbers. I just put my money on one number each time and it won. You may say ‘same with the children.’ But then my wife and I chose each other and we chose to have children. OK we split up later but we brought each through their first 5 years of life which people say forms a person for life.
However, they also said that in other walks of life, some people are more consistently luckier than others because they think farther ahead and map out alternative scenarios. Makes sense to me. Certainly, I think my parents did.
Hence the expression, ‘Born lucky.’
Money
Health
Kids
Education
Travel
Love
Peace and contentment
Space
Friendship
Gadgets
Food availability
Well, when I cast my eyes down that list then I do indeed feel I have been lucky. There may have been bad moments but the good outweigh the bad. At least, I think so.
So is there a reason why I am lucky? Never really thought about it until I read some report, American, of course. They said that you cannot be consistently lucky at things which are pure chance. Interesting because I have only played roulette twice and I won both times – not with that black/red stuff or even odd/even numbers. I just put my money on one number each time and it won. You may say ‘same with the children.’ But then my wife and I chose each other and we chose to have children. OK we split up later but we brought each through their first 5 years of life which people say forms a person for life.
However, they also said that in other walks of life, some people are more consistently luckier than others because they think farther ahead and map out alternative scenarios. Makes sense to me. Certainly, I think my parents did.
Hence the expression, ‘Born lucky.’
9/11
It’s like the death of JFK, you just remember what you were doing at the time. In that event, I was a student on a Liverpool bus going into town when a man slumped into the seat next to me and muttered some thing like that I would be called up(for the army). I think that he was drunk even though it was only 7.30 pm. I was going into town to watch a performance of Henrik Ibsen’s ‘The Master Builders.’ Boring bloody play which put me off Ibsen for life.
On 9/11, I was quietly sitting in my office working when my secretary came in and said that Pete Simmons (Facilities Manager) has just said that a plane has crashed into the Word Trade Centre. ‘Not surprised,’ I said, ‘planes fly round there like bees around a honey pot. Had to happen some day.’ Carried on working. Then she comes back and tells me that another plane has hit the Twin Towers. Now I am interested.
We all dashed home at the end of the day to see what was happening and then, of course, we saw the towers collapse. I said to my partner something like, ‘Now they have a taste of terrorism, maybe they will stop supporting the IRA.’ I was told that I was callous but it came to pass.
Went back to New York in March 2003 and put flowers on the fencing for the firewoman. It was cold and the wind moaned over the site.
We had lunch at the top of one tower once. Let’s face it: it could have been you and it could have been me.
Eva Peron
All I know about her is from what I have read and the musical ‘Evita.’ She seems to have been a charismatic lady but whether or not she did any good, I do not know. What I do know is this.
One day in Buenos Aires, I went to visit the cemetery called ‘La Recoleta.’ I walked there; it was a nice sunny day. There is a map at the entrance showing you which tomb was which. It didn’t help much as most of the tombs were like monuments so you could not see very far and you soon lose count of the different avenues and pathways. Truth is you do not need to count all.
Walk down the main aisle from the gate and glance right and left at each intersection. You will find it easily because it is the only tomb which gathers a crowd even today.
It is not actually her tomb alone but a mausoleum to the whole Duarte family. It is strewn with flowers and surrounded by people talking quietly. Went back again 2 years later. It was just the same.
My favourite elements
Programme on BBC4 now about chemistry. You may or not find it exciting; I did. So I thought I would write about the elements that fascinate me. This is a personal view but it is not an uninformed one. I am a graduate chemist so here is no particular order are my favourite elements
Mercury – wonderful stuff, the only metal which is liquid at room temperature. Gallium comes close for it will melt in your hand but it’s not the same. Mercury is heavy and feels cold. When we were kids at school, we regarded it like gold. We had a wooden floor in the chemistry lab and little globules of mercury found their way into the cracks. So when the teacher wasn’t looking, we’d get them out and put them in a little bottle. It was almost a competition to see who got the most.
Of course we didn’t have all this Health & Safety stuff then, so we ignored the fact that mercury gives a poisonous vapour. Get enough of it and you go mad (Mad Hatter’s Disease) before you die.
Bromine – the only halogen that is liquid at room temperatures although even then it gives off fumes. Both the fumes and the liquid are a wonderful dark red brown colour. Saw it but rarely but it was always a great sight. Nasty stuff though.
Iodine – a solid halogen which forms into dark violet crystals at room temperature. Warm it up and it sublimes which is to say that it goes from solid to gas without passing through the intermediate liquid stage – as does solid CO2 or ‘dry ice.’ The vapour is stunningly beautiful, a deep violet/purple maybe with brown tinges. Loved playing with it in school.
If you put it into concentrated ammonia, it will form a blackish sludge of what is supposed to be nitrogen tri iodide but is actually a combination product NH3.NI3. When wet it is dormant but dry it out and it becomes one, if not the most, sensitive explosives in the world. So sensitive in fact that for all practical purposes, it is useless. When dry, you only have to touch it and it goes off with a loud bang and emits that violet iodine vapour.
So I used to make it and keep it in a test tube, wet. Again when the teacher was not looking I used to dribble the suspension in the cracks of the chemistry lab floor. Once it dried out it would crackle and splutter as you walked over it. Later I prepared some in the VIth form room. Too much with hindsight. It dried by morning and I tried to separate some before Morning Assembly. Bang and I was blinded and deaf and it took a couple of hours to recover. My next plan was to put some of the wet paste on the bottom of the legs of the headmaster’s chair in our school Assembly Hall. He always had the same routine; walk across the stage, stand in front of the chair, pull it forward and sit down. I planned to do this on the final day of term when he would address those of us leaving school for the last time. Never liked him. But one girl in class by the unfortunate name of Ruth Ellis (same as the last woman hanged in Britain) said she’s split on me. So I gave it up; you never know in this life whom you might call on for reference some day.
Later at University when I was in a hall of residence, I put some of the wet sludge in them little rubber bungs under the toilet seat. Did it late at night so it dried out by morning. Spectacular results but unfortunately, my fellow residents found out. A few nights later, they distracted me to take a telephone call in reception and while I was away, they threw all my bedding in the showers. Bastards with no sense of fun.
Potassium – a violently reactive metal in the presence of oxygen so you have to keep it in oil. It has the texture of cheese so you can cut it easily. Put a little bit in water and it whizzes about like a scalded cat with a beautiful lilac flame as it emits hydrogen. Once the teacher took a gauze container and put a bigger lump in it. He held it underwater and placed a gas jar above it to capture the emission of hydrogen. Misjudged that. The lump was too big and the water trough shattered so we kids had to jump back to avoid the floods.
Phosphorus : What a bloody element? And even if you know little about its chemistry you know about its use in matches and phosphorescence. Phosphorus will quite simply react with anything. When it gets to air, it has a go at the oxygen and thereby gives rise to its eerie glow. Think I was about 16 when my teacher allowed me to create PCl3 aka Phosphorus Trichloride, the only person allowed to do so – but then I was good. This is a dangerous experiment so it had to be carried out in an armoured glass fume cupboard. OK I followed the rules up to a point but then there was an enormous explosion and the fume cupboard was destroyed. Luckily the armoured glass buckled but did not rupture so we were spared injury. Extraction fan was destroyed too. I was quite proud of myself.
End of term report, my teacher wrote, ‘David is very good at this subject but he must learn that there is more to Chemistry than the creation of explosions.’ Personally, explosions fascinated me.
Cobalt – nothing special in its pure form, silvery, shiny but then so are many metals. It is the single metallic atom at the heart of vitamin B12 so it’s important to us. My attraction to Cobalt was the colour of its salts and their variability, some red or pink and some blue. Hydration had a lot to do with it.
But then there was an experiment that I did in the wash house down the yard which my teachers could not understand at the time and neither can I to this day. Dissolve some cobalt chloride in water in a test tube and slowly pour in hydrogen peroxide from the side as gently as possible. At the interface, you got a ring of some exquisitely purple substance maybe 3 or 4 mm thick and the oxygen bubbled from it as the hydrogen peroxide broke down. Once that finished, the purple disappeared. So what was it? No idea, nor anybody else. So probably an intermediary product which accelerated the breakdown of the peroxide.
And finally I have a denture for the loss of two teeth. It is made of cobalt and some other metal. It has served me well for over 35 years.
Hydrogen – you can’t see it, you can’t smell it yet it is the most abundant element in the universe. It is fascinating, quite fascinating. Lightest element of all and the simplest. The stuff of stars. Easy to make; just drop some light element into an acid. Loves oxygen and goes off with a pop. Its beauty lies in the fact that it is the most fundamental element of all.
Add a neutron or two and there we have atomic weapons, well hydrogen bombs.
Sulphur - now here is a pretty element, yellow mostly. Can be powdered or crystalline or even an amorphous dark brown platiscky rubbish. Was once called brimstone which I think is a pretty name. Now this is the stuff of volcanoes; its crystals can be found on the vents. Once went to get a sample on the Greek island of Nissyros with my Swiss Army knife. OK I got it but I burned my fingers with the hot sulphur dioxide venting from the orifice and the knife is stained to this day.
Versatile too. Mix it with charcoal, saltpetre (aka Sodium Nitrate) and you get gunpowder. Combine it with hydrogen and you get Hydrogen Sulphide, the so-called rotten eggs gas but then when did you last have a rotten egg by which to compare it?
Copper – this has to be the most beautiful metal of all, beating even gold in its untarnished state. What colour can you give it for there is nothing like it? It’s just copper and therefore a colour in itself. It is not surprising that such a wonderful metal has been used in coinage around the world; it is not just beautiful but it doesn’t corrode quickly although over the years when used on roofing, it acquires a green patina of oxides, sulphates and carbonates (maybe wrong there but cannot be arsed to look it up).
But that is the beauty of copper, so colourful in itself and a generator of colour in its compounds. And I adore the way it gives that intense green colour in a flame.
Magnesium – well a very light shiny metal but nothing exceptional. When alloyed with aluminium, it makes a strong metal used for car alloy wheels and other things. My first digital camera had a magnesium/aluminium body which always felt good and somehow remained cool even in the highest temperatures.
That’s all very nice but what gets to me about magnesium is the way it burns. Set alight a piece of magnesium ribbon and it burns like no other, well no other that I have ever seen. It is so brilliant that you can imagine the brightness of the stars; quite stunning. I don’t think in my life that I have ever seen something burn so bright.
Chromium – Another silvery metal. You all know it because you know about chrome plating.
For me, its attraction came not with the metal but its compounds for they are colourful. My first was potassium dichromate, an exquisite orange powder although I do believe you can get it in crystals. Then there was the oxide, well Cr203, think chromic oxide but you can’t be sure without looking it up for chromium has several valences.
Gold and Platinum – So now we come to perhaps the most famous metals of all time even for non-chemists. We can dispense with platinum easily. Another silvery metal of extraordinarily resilience but otherwise boring. Its sister elements like palladium and rhodium are just as good but attract less attention.
But then you move on to gold and you can understand why it has captivated the human race through the ages. It is simply quite beautiful. No metal like it. Heavy and yellow and does not tarnish. Gold is eternal and will last forever whatever shape into which it is formed. Prized throughout the world for centuries, it remains the metal of the gods. Seen the death mask of Tutankhamen but now I want to look upon his gold coffin.
Do I have a favourite? No. They are all wonderful in their own way. It’s just some appeal to me more than others.
Mercury – wonderful stuff, the only metal which is liquid at room temperature. Gallium comes close for it will melt in your hand but it’s not the same. Mercury is heavy and feels cold. When we were kids at school, we regarded it like gold. We had a wooden floor in the chemistry lab and little globules of mercury found their way into the cracks. So when the teacher wasn’t looking, we’d get them out and put them in a little bottle. It was almost a competition to see who got the most.
Of course we didn’t have all this Health & Safety stuff then, so we ignored the fact that mercury gives a poisonous vapour. Get enough of it and you go mad (Mad Hatter’s Disease) before you die.
Bromine – the only halogen that is liquid at room temperatures although even then it gives off fumes. Both the fumes and the liquid are a wonderful dark red brown colour. Saw it but rarely but it was always a great sight. Nasty stuff though.
Iodine – a solid halogen which forms into dark violet crystals at room temperature. Warm it up and it sublimes which is to say that it goes from solid to gas without passing through the intermediate liquid stage – as does solid CO2 or ‘dry ice.’ The vapour is stunningly beautiful, a deep violet/purple maybe with brown tinges. Loved playing with it in school.
If you put it into concentrated ammonia, it will form a blackish sludge of what is supposed to be nitrogen tri iodide but is actually a combination product NH3.NI3. When wet it is dormant but dry it out and it becomes one, if not the most, sensitive explosives in the world. So sensitive in fact that for all practical purposes, it is useless. When dry, you only have to touch it and it goes off with a loud bang and emits that violet iodine vapour.
So I used to make it and keep it in a test tube, wet. Again when the teacher was not looking I used to dribble the suspension in the cracks of the chemistry lab floor. Once it dried out it would crackle and splutter as you walked over it. Later I prepared some in the VIth form room. Too much with hindsight. It dried by morning and I tried to separate some before Morning Assembly. Bang and I was blinded and deaf and it took a couple of hours to recover. My next plan was to put some of the wet paste on the bottom of the legs of the headmaster’s chair in our school Assembly Hall. He always had the same routine; walk across the stage, stand in front of the chair, pull it forward and sit down. I planned to do this on the final day of term when he would address those of us leaving school for the last time. Never liked him. But one girl in class by the unfortunate name of Ruth Ellis (same as the last woman hanged in Britain) said she’s split on me. So I gave it up; you never know in this life whom you might call on for reference some day.
Later at University when I was in a hall of residence, I put some of the wet sludge in them little rubber bungs under the toilet seat. Did it late at night so it dried out by morning. Spectacular results but unfortunately, my fellow residents found out. A few nights later, they distracted me to take a telephone call in reception and while I was away, they threw all my bedding in the showers. Bastards with no sense of fun.
Potassium – a violently reactive metal in the presence of oxygen so you have to keep it in oil. It has the texture of cheese so you can cut it easily. Put a little bit in water and it whizzes about like a scalded cat with a beautiful lilac flame as it emits hydrogen. Once the teacher took a gauze container and put a bigger lump in it. He held it underwater and placed a gas jar above it to capture the emission of hydrogen. Misjudged that. The lump was too big and the water trough shattered so we kids had to jump back to avoid the floods.
Phosphorus : What a bloody element? And even if you know little about its chemistry you know about its use in matches and phosphorescence. Phosphorus will quite simply react with anything. When it gets to air, it has a go at the oxygen and thereby gives rise to its eerie glow. Think I was about 16 when my teacher allowed me to create PCl3 aka Phosphorus Trichloride, the only person allowed to do so – but then I was good. This is a dangerous experiment so it had to be carried out in an armoured glass fume cupboard. OK I followed the rules up to a point but then there was an enormous explosion and the fume cupboard was destroyed. Luckily the armoured glass buckled but did not rupture so we were spared injury. Extraction fan was destroyed too. I was quite proud of myself.
End of term report, my teacher wrote, ‘David is very good at this subject but he must learn that there is more to Chemistry than the creation of explosions.’ Personally, explosions fascinated me.
Cobalt – nothing special in its pure form, silvery, shiny but then so are many metals. It is the single metallic atom at the heart of vitamin B12 so it’s important to us. My attraction to Cobalt was the colour of its salts and their variability, some red or pink and some blue. Hydration had a lot to do with it.
But then there was an experiment that I did in the wash house down the yard which my teachers could not understand at the time and neither can I to this day. Dissolve some cobalt chloride in water in a test tube and slowly pour in hydrogen peroxide from the side as gently as possible. At the interface, you got a ring of some exquisitely purple substance maybe 3 or 4 mm thick and the oxygen bubbled from it as the hydrogen peroxide broke down. Once that finished, the purple disappeared. So what was it? No idea, nor anybody else. So probably an intermediary product which accelerated the breakdown of the peroxide.
And finally I have a denture for the loss of two teeth. It is made of cobalt and some other metal. It has served me well for over 35 years.
Hydrogen – you can’t see it, you can’t smell it yet it is the most abundant element in the universe. It is fascinating, quite fascinating. Lightest element of all and the simplest. The stuff of stars. Easy to make; just drop some light element into an acid. Loves oxygen and goes off with a pop. Its beauty lies in the fact that it is the most fundamental element of all.
Add a neutron or two and there we have atomic weapons, well hydrogen bombs.
Sulphur - now here is a pretty element, yellow mostly. Can be powdered or crystalline or even an amorphous dark brown platiscky rubbish. Was once called brimstone which I think is a pretty name. Now this is the stuff of volcanoes; its crystals can be found on the vents. Once went to get a sample on the Greek island of Nissyros with my Swiss Army knife. OK I got it but I burned my fingers with the hot sulphur dioxide venting from the orifice and the knife is stained to this day.
Versatile too. Mix it with charcoal, saltpetre (aka Sodium Nitrate) and you get gunpowder. Combine it with hydrogen and you get Hydrogen Sulphide, the so-called rotten eggs gas but then when did you last have a rotten egg by which to compare it?
Copper – this has to be the most beautiful metal of all, beating even gold in its untarnished state. What colour can you give it for there is nothing like it? It’s just copper and therefore a colour in itself. It is not surprising that such a wonderful metal has been used in coinage around the world; it is not just beautiful but it doesn’t corrode quickly although over the years when used on roofing, it acquires a green patina of oxides, sulphates and carbonates (maybe wrong there but cannot be arsed to look it up).
But that is the beauty of copper, so colourful in itself and a generator of colour in its compounds. And I adore the way it gives that intense green colour in a flame.
Magnesium – well a very light shiny metal but nothing exceptional. When alloyed with aluminium, it makes a strong metal used for car alloy wheels and other things. My first digital camera had a magnesium/aluminium body which always felt good and somehow remained cool even in the highest temperatures.
That’s all very nice but what gets to me about magnesium is the way it burns. Set alight a piece of magnesium ribbon and it burns like no other, well no other that I have ever seen. It is so brilliant that you can imagine the brightness of the stars; quite stunning. I don’t think in my life that I have ever seen something burn so bright.
Chromium – Another silvery metal. You all know it because you know about chrome plating.
For me, its attraction came not with the metal but its compounds for they are colourful. My first was potassium dichromate, an exquisite orange powder although I do believe you can get it in crystals. Then there was the oxide, well Cr203, think chromic oxide but you can’t be sure without looking it up for chromium has several valences.
Gold and Platinum – So now we come to perhaps the most famous metals of all time even for non-chemists. We can dispense with platinum easily. Another silvery metal of extraordinarily resilience but otherwise boring. Its sister elements like palladium and rhodium are just as good but attract less attention.
But then you move on to gold and you can understand why it has captivated the human race through the ages. It is simply quite beautiful. No metal like it. Heavy and yellow and does not tarnish. Gold is eternal and will last forever whatever shape into which it is formed. Prized throughout the world for centuries, it remains the metal of the gods. Seen the death mask of Tutankhamen but now I want to look upon his gold coffin.
Do I have a favourite? No. They are all wonderful in their own way. It’s just some appeal to me more than others.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
