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.
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!
There was this crackpot writer named William S. Burroughs who was not only a trust fund baby (yes, thatBurroughs* 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
As you can see from the chart asparagus is a spring crop here in the Pacific Northwest. I bought my bunch in the middle of winter!
It takes about two weeks to ship a container from Lima or Callao in Peru to coastal ports like Los Angeles or Savannah. Obviously produce has to be refrigerated, but even carefully packaged and stored vegetables lose much of their nutritional value a few days after harvest. These folks say asparagus has a shelf-life of 5-7 days in your fridge. But what if it hasn’t gotten to my fridge yet?
To be fair, the asparagus from Raley’s was crisp and delicious. Obviously I cannot evaluate the nutritional content. And I’m not sure I would be able to distinguish the off-season Peruvian asparagus from local, seasonal asparagus. Perhaps in a side-by-side comparison I might be able to pick out the “fresher” alternative, but I don’t think so.
There is this idea that we should reduce our “food miles.” The energy/carbon footprint of global trade is massive. (Most foodstuffs, at least, are shipped and not flown.) At the same time, people in poorer countries and communities depend on the income from farm exports. Americans have the luxury of food surplus. We get to choose what we eat, when we eat, and how much we eat. Even in a small, nowheresville-town like Yreka I can get an astonishing variety of food from all over the world.
Economists want everything to be about efficiency and comparative advantage. Economists are analytical types and they like stuff to fit neatly into their definitions and equations. Most of them don’t “think outside the box” of their discipline. Agriculture is not an entirely economic activity! Farming is not just a business, it is much more fundamental to our existence and a deep and enduring part of our cultural inheritance. It’s not just about dollars-and-cents, but about how we live and our relationship to our planet.
Being a “locavore” may not always be practical. I like coffee, for example. And everyone I know (except me) likes bananas! But exceptions don’t undermine the big idea. The big idea is that we should have robust and healthy local agriculture to support robust and healthy communities. That’s a no-brainer.
What does it take to have robust and healthy communities? For one thing, don’t vote for assholes like the current one in White House. People like that care only about themselves, about getting richer, and about “getting one over” on their perceived opponents and enemies. The world doesn’t get better when people like that usurp and wield power.
I want a world where people work way less and have way more time to be with their families and take care of each other. I want a world where everyone has access to quality food and fresh water. Where no one is un-housed. Where people are free from tyranny and abuse. I don’t know how to make this world any more than you do. But we won’t get anywhere if we don’t make these our goals.
Think big. Think about the whole world. It’s not just a bunch of asparagus! It’s a chain of connections stretching across the globe and we are all part of it.
We get told all the time to buy more stuff. If we really needed the stuff then we wouldn’t have to be told, am I right? I mean, we don’t need TV ads to tell us to get more food. We have hunger for that!
But capitalism depends on consumption. Make stuff, buy stuff, throw stuff away, buy new stuff. And on and on. Forever. Until the entire planet is a trash heap.
Most of the shit we buy we don’t need. We just buy it because we don’t know what else to do.
EUMENTICS™ is the path forward. This new science of mental health will set you free from the chains of consumerism!
We know that TV is bad for you. That’s why the practicing Eumenticist™ has learned and implemented the first two lessons:
Always watch sports with the sound off and always watch TV while in the grip of a mild hallucinogen.
And of course we need humor to cope with the recent horror that has been foisted upon us. That’s why we engage lesson three whenever we can:
Imagine everyone wearing diapers.
Lesson four (be sure to waste time) helps to free you from the Puritan Work Ethic and as well as the Tyranny of Modern Psychology and the horrors of FOMO.
Lesson five (learn to smile vacuously and say “I’m fine”) acknowledges the painful reality that we have to listen to idiots all day long.
Among those idiots are the people who write commercials. Good grief, commercials are really bad for you! I always love it when Budweiser tells us they are the “king of beers” and they keep telling us that over and over again to the point of nausea. If the beer is so great, why do they have to shove it down our throats? Can’t it stand on its own greatness? Of course not! It’s just another ordinary consumer product. Only the billions of dollars spent on marketing hype makes people think otherwise.
One thing we poor, struggling, wannabe Eumenticists™ can do is keep our wallets in our pockets. That brings us to lesson six:
QUIT BUYING STUPID SHIT YOU DON’T NEED.
Be creative. You probably already have what you need. Remember the three R’s (reduce-reuse-recycle). Shopping is not therapy. In fact, it is a symptom of the disease. We are all infected with the consumerist virus—it is our birthright as Americans. And I think we can all agree that real-life super-villain Jeff Bezos does not need any more Amazon customers. You’d think 300 million suckers would be enough, but apparently not. (If your business isn’t growing, it’s failing.)
Bob Marley says in “Redemption Song” (and I believe he stole this from Marcus Garvey) Emancipate yourself from mental slavery;/None but ourselves can free our minds.
Cerium (Ce) is the most abundant of the lanthanoids. You find those in row (period) 6 of the periodic table. The two periods on the bottom of the chart (row 6 and row 7, the actinoids) make up the “rare-earth” elements. In our tech-sodden world demand for REEs (rare-earth elements) continues to grow. All of these elements were first isolated as oxides.
The oxide of cerium (CeO2), known as ceria, has a variety of uses. The one that interests me is in automobile catalytic converters. (When people were stealing these things they were going after the platinum and other precious metals, not the ceria. Rare-earths aren’t all that rare!)
The Environmental Protection Agency mandated automobile exhaust emissions control as a result of the 1970 Clean Air Act. By 1975 almost all cars were equipped with catalytic converters. The impact on air quality (and thus public health) was noticeable in every city but particularly in the LA basin. Smog in Los Angeles had been part of the landscape for so long people were astonished to see the mountains after decades of pollution-obscured vistas.
A lot of short-sighted people hollered about such government interventions (like banning lead in gasoline) back in those days. The same idiots are still screaming today even though we have proof that environmental regulations can, and do, improve life for everyone. I wish we could count on the Holy of Holies—the “marketplace”—to get clean air. But we can’t. We have to order the assholes who pollute the air to stop doing it.
And we have to look in the mirror, too. Our insatiable demand for more of everything comes at a cost.
Scientists in Ireland have synthesized ceria (they call it cerianite) in the laboratory. Although the element cerium has no known biological function the compound cerianite shows potential as an antioxidant and as an anti-inflammatory agent. Here’s a picture of some of the particle types they made:
They range from nano-particles (1-100 nm in diameter) to micro-particles (100-2500 nm). A nano-meter (nm) is 10-9 or one-billionth of a meter. The scale on the photo shows 0.001 milli-meters which is 1000 nm.
A molecule of the simple sugar glucose is about one nanometer across in size. A bacterium would be on the order of one thousand nanometers. (Wolfram Alpha is a fun resource!)
And now we’ve reached Lesson Five. All day long we have to listen to stupid shit. Am I right? Of course I am. How then does one stay on the Eumentical™ Path? How does one stay mentally healthy despite always swimming in a sea of shite? What does it take?
It’s simple.
Lesson Five: learn to smile vacuously and say “I’m fine.”
This does not mean you have to BE vacuous. Just that everyone will THINK you are an empty, unthinking, harmless creature. This is very liberating. I used to teach high school kids. High school kids worry all the time about what everyone thinks about them. Then they grow up. (Well, some do.) And they learn two things: (1) no one really gave a shit about them long enough to think about them, and (2) it doesn’t make any difference what people think anyway, it only matters what YOU think!
So go forth and arm yourself with Lesson Five and all will be FINE.
The original formulation of Bromo-Seltzer included sodium bromide (NaBr) for its sedative effects. Bromides were pulled from the shelves in the 1970s as they were discovered to be toxic! Seems like capitalists have been trying to poison us for years.
Bromine compounds are still used in veterinary medicine as anticonvulsants.
Bromine, much like its sister elements fluorine and chlorine, is both corrosive and highly reactive. At room temperature it is a brownish-red liquid. Mercury is the only other element that is liquid at room temperature. It’s a metal of course while bromine is a non-metal. Specifically it is a halogen.
The largest commercial use for bromine is in flame retardants. Tetrabromobisphenol-A for example is used in, believe it or not, circuit boards. The stuff is incorporated directly into the plastics and resins to make them fire resistant. All sorts of textiles used in clothing, furniture, and upholstery are infused with BFRs (brominated flame retardants) or related chemicals.
Bromine is extracted from seawater and inland brines. The Dead Sea between Israel and Jordan is a major source. Worldwide production is about 600,000 tonnes.
Do you remember when Lowe’s came out with their new slogan Never Stop Improving?
I have to tell you that kind of corporate advertising crap really grinds my Eumentical™ gears. What’s the matter with these people? Don’t they know how to relax?
There’s this fellow, an Irish storyteller by the name of Tomáseen Foley, and he used a phrase once about the modern world that really stuck with me. He said he was wary of “the rising tide of busy-ness that threatens to engulf us all.”
I live in a town of about 7500 people. I moved here 35 years ago and back then there were about 7500 residents. But the population of the county has dropped by 20%, from 50,000 to 40,000. It’s an economically depressed area. School enrollments are down. Small businesses are shuttered. But the town is WAY BUSIER now than it was then! We have more streetlights and more traffic. We have new “big-box” stores. The town infrastructure (roads, sewers, water supply) just got a major upgrade. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
We are busier, like Foley said. We’ve been convinced by our puritan ancestors and our corporate overlords that lying about lazily and enjoying the simple things is subversive. So we go out there and make lots of economic activity and run around and do a lot of stuff we don’t need to do just so we can feel better about our lives.
Whatever happened to REDUCE, REUSE, and RECYCLE? Don’t we have enough crap? Aren’t there enough things to do that require only time and labor and don’t require a trip to the shopping center? Why do we let these bloodsuckers decide how we live?
This is where EUMENTICS™ comes in. We’ve covered the first three Lessons. Today is number four. Ready?
Lesson Four: be sure to waste time.
Nothing is better for your mental well-being than telling the world to fuck off and leave you alone! Greta Garbo said “I vant to beLETalone.” (Not “I vant to be alone.) If anyone understood the trappings of modernity, it was the Swedish Sphinx.
There’s a beautiful song by the band Phish called “Waste.” Some people call it a Slacker Anthem. Well, I think slackers get a bad rap.
Anyway, here’s some lyrics: Don’t wanna be a farmer workin’ in the Sun/Don’t wanna be an outlaw, always on the run/Don’t wanna be a climber reachin’ for the top/Don’t wanna be anything where I don’t know when to stop.
And then the singer goes on to implore his partner to “come waste your time with me.”
This chart tells the story of America and of being an American. The USA consumes close to 100 quads of energy each year. A “quad” is one quadrillion BTUs. A quadrillion is 15 zeroes, so one hundred of them is 17 zeroes. That’s 1 x 10^17 (or 1 E 17) or perhaps you prefer 100,000,000,000,000,000. Man, that’s a boatload! A BTU (British Thermal Unit) is a standard for measuring heat energy—you’ve probably seen a rating on your home furnace. It’s the energy needed to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. (A pint weighs about a pound.)
It’s hard to make these measurements, calculations, and estimates. But it’s good work. It tells you everything you need to know. I particularly like the gray flows labeled “Rejected Energy” which is a fancy way to say “waste heat.” Your car is mostly waste heat. Only a portion of the energy in gasoline (or diesel) goes into making the car move. The rest is waste heat.
Think about how much energy we waste! Natural resources ought be conserved, that is, used wisely. We can do better than this. (If you click on the chart it gets bigger.)
Mark C. O'Connor 