There are some things on the periodic table that are hardly there at all. The heaviest of all the column 1 elements—the so-called alkali* metals—is also the rarest. Its most abundant isotope (Fr-223) has a half-life of only 22 minutes! There is so little of the stuff (certainly much less than a kilogram) in the earth’s crust at any one time that many of Francium’s physical properties (density, melting point, etc.) are only inferred.

Francium was discovered by Marguerite Perey. She had been a student of Marie Curie’s and at the time of her breakthrough was working with the Curie’s daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie. She was the first woman elected to the French Academy of sciences (1962). Her famous mentors were denied that honor: Marie died in 1935 and Irene in 1956. All three women suffered from radiation exposure due to the risky nature of their work. All three died of complications due to those exposures.

Perey didn’t get a Nobel Prize for isolating what turned out to be the last of the “natural” elements. In fact interest in her work faded quickly despite its significance. Here’s a picture of the crew from the Radium Institute in Paris in 1930. Perey is seated on the far left:

Many other women made fundamental contributions to nuclear science: Maria Goeppert-Mayer and Lise Meitner come to mind immediately. And certainly other women have had their work neglected like Perey, with Rosalind Franklin being the most obvious, I suppose. Ultimately one has to work for one’s own satisfaction as counting on the respect and recognition of others is a fool’s game.

*Lithium, Sodium, Potassium, Rubidium, and Cesium

Titanium is groovy stuff. Stronger than steel, but less dense. Denser than aluminum, but stronger. It resists corrosion, like aluminum, because it reacts with oxygen to form a thin layer of oxide on its surface. This property also means that titanium metal is not found in nature—only its compounds. It’s the ninth-most abundant element in the earth’s crust.

Titanium alloys have such a range of applications, from aerospace to agriculture, that it’s hard to imagine the modern world without it. Titanium is bio-compatible and is used for medical implants. You probably know someone with a titanium knee or hip. Interestingly, the metal is not magnetic and is a poor conductor of heat and electricity.

Titanium dioxide (TiO₂), also called titania, is well-known to everyone as a bright white pigment. Sunscreens and paints use TiO₂, for example. World production of titania is in the millions of tonnes.

Titanium cladding was used by Frank Gehry in the design of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum (in Spain). Check it out:

Click on the image to embiggen.

I was a 70s kid so the version of Elvis that I remember is the pudgy guy in the white suit with the big collar and lots of rhinestones. It was like a comic book version of a performer—you couldn’t take him seriously.

Elvis, in reality, was a brilliant talent and a true original. Sadly, he’s the poster boy for how fame destroys a person. Getting rich and famous is every American’s dream. For Elvis it was a nightmare.

When you go back and listen to the early Elvis or watch his movies you see what the phenomenon was all about. He could sing anything. Blues and gospel were as natural to him as hillbilly and folk. He could rock up-tempo numbers, croon love ballads, re-interpret standards, you-name-it. You can see the joy he took in his signing and music-making. It’s sad to think what made him great was also what destroyed him.

And then there’s the dancing. The guy had moves. The raw sexuality of his wriggling and twisting shocked audiences in middle America. Juke joints and barrelhouses had, for decades, featured performers who did much more explicit things, but those were on the fringes of polite society. Elvis was on TV in the goddamn heartland!

Eventually, like all outliers and oddballs, Elvis became mainstream. His dancing was no longer subversive, but cool and clever.

I’ve have no rhythm, can’t sing for shit, and am about as musical as hailstones on my car’s roof. But I love to dance. I think dancing is the most wonderful thing in the world and that everyone should dance as often as possible.

You know what? You don’t even need music. Just dance to the music in your head! That’s what Elvis did. He just moved to the feeling inside of him. It was so natural and pure and singular. The guy was already dancing in his head before anyone struck a note. The song just opened the floodgate and let it all flow.

One dangerous assumption we make about artists is that they don’t think about what they do. That it’s all intuitive and requires little or no intellectual effort. Well, that’s nonsense. Elvis could create dance moves on the spot, but there’s no doubt he worked on those moves and improved his technique. Like all performers he was self-conscious—he knew what he looked like and he honed that look. He sharpened the edges and smoothed the rough spots. Singers train their voices. They practice. They experiment. So do dancers, of course. That’s how an artist creates a signature style. It takes a lot of thought and effort.

But we aren’t professionals. We are just folks trying to get by. So we don’t have to worry about what we look like. We don’t have to rehearse and tighten up our act. We can just “let it all hang out.”

And that brings me back to EUMENTICS™, my revolutionary new system for mental health and well-being. There are only a handful of lessons in EUMENTICS™, and you don’t even have to remember them because I already wrote them down.

This is our penultimate EUMENTICS™ lesson. Only one more after this!

Lesson seven: dance to the music in your head.

There was this crackpot writer named William S. Burroughs who was not only a trust fund baby (yes, that Burroughs* family) but a junkie as well. He could occasionally turn a phrase. He coined “the algebra of need” when discussing his heroin addiction. Elaborating, Burroughs says:

Well, by the “algebra of need” I simply meant that, given certain known factors in an equation and the equation comprising a situation of absolute need — any form of need — you can predict the results. Leave a sick junkie in the back room of a drugstore and only one result is possible. The same is true of anyone in a state of absolute hunger, absolute fear, etc. The more absolute the need, the more predictable the behavior becomes until it is mathematically certain.

Our country is currently in the grip of something absolute. And that is the absolutism of our TechBro Overlords.

Assholes like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and the rest of the billionaire class are diseased men. They are possessed by the Algebra of Greed. They have more money than they could ever spend or disperse, they have the power and influence that comes with that money, they have fame, notoriety, and celebrity status, they have absurd vanity projects like rocket ships, and, most importantly, they get to sit at the Right Hand of Their King. They are the Princes of MAGAt-land.

But it’s not enough.

They want more. They want to be admired. Respected. Loved. I know, it makes one retch.

(But if they can’t have love or admiration they’ll settle for fear.)

It’s the Algebra of Greed. More plus more equals even more. More times more, more raised to the power of more, More for the Sake of More.

We’ll dress these characters up with gushing stories about their brilliance, their entrepreneurial vision, their technological savvy, and their boldness and risk-taking.

We’ll leave out their law-breaking, moral vacuousness, and monumental vanity.

The truth is these guys are sociopaths. They aren’t our heroes and certainly should not be our leaders. How in the world can a free, democratic nation turn over its government’s management and accountability to un-elected private operators? Why do Elon and his minions get to look at our personal data and then decide who or what gets axed? This is nothing short of a coup.

The dumbshit in the White House has turned the country over to pirates. He’s letting them loot the treasury and tear up, disrupt, and destroy anything that they don’t like. And they don’t like much. And they certainly don’t like you. They don’t want the government to help you. They want you to be entirely dependent on them.

They want to turn the USA into a company store. I mean the kind of company store that Merle Travis immortalized in his song “Sixteen Tons“:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

It’s not easy for ordinary citizens to get out from under the grip of the Greed Brigade. And it is nearly impossible to do it as consumers. And being a consumer is more important than being a citizen—at least as far as these guys are concerned.

The best thing we can probably do is stop buying their shit. As much as we can, anyway. And stop buying into their “vision” of the future. It’s great for them and crap for us.

My next post will be more positive, I swear! I shall wrap up my EUMENTICS™ lessons.

*Burroughs Corp. merged with Sperry to form UNISYS in 1986